Santy chronicles

Me at age-six with the REAL Santy. (I’m probably asking for a Lionel train.)

As royally messed-up as I am, my wife, who of course is now gone, told me the reason she chased and eventually married me is because of the way I thunk.
For example, I’d walk in our house, after working out at the YMCA, and say: “I have news. Of all the many places on this vast planet Santa Claus could visit, he’s gonna visit our town, tiny West Bloomfield.”
That’s because I had just passed a sign at the Legion-hall up the street that said Santa would visit.
Yrs Trly always had a difficult time with the Santa story.
I believed in Santa, but there were Santas everywhere; multiple Santas on street-corners.
“But they’re not the REAL Santa Claus,” my mother would say. “The REAL Santa is at Gimbels Department-store in Philadelphia.” He’d come in Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving-Day parade on a hook-and-ladder, which got raised to Gimbels’ eighth-floor, then Santa climbed up to enter Gimbels through a window.
Those street-corner Santas were ersatz.
Gimbels, of course, is gone. It liquidated in 1987.
I’m sure there were other real Santas in Philadelphia. I bet Strawbridge & Clothier had one. As did Wanamaker’s and Lit Brothers.
But Gimbels is where my family shopped. Strawbridge’s and Wanamaker’s were upper-crust — perceived as pricy = of-the-Devil.
Plus it was Gimbels’ Thanksgiving-Day parade.
My father worked for additional income at a nearby Sears, and they too had a Santa. But he wasn’t the REAL Santa.
If I’d sat on his lap, I’d tell him the REAL Santa was at Gimbels.
At age-six our family visited Gimbels; to see the REAL Santa Claus, and have our picture taken.
That’s the picture above, and I see I look very ernest.
I have another picture of Santa with my sister, since deceased, but she looks very bored.
Wiggling all over, but at least not crying. Many of the toddlers were crying. “Why am I on the lap of this total stranger? Mommy!”
Santa would visit our town in south Jersey.
But it wasn’t the REAL Santa. It was Charley Philpot (“fill-pot”), chief of the Volunteer Fire-Department.
He’d ride around our town atop our American-LaFrance fire-truck.
Little children would yank his costume beard, and Charley would angrily tell them to stop.
I wasn’t fooled. The REAL Santa was at Gimbels.
My parents revealed the secret when I was seven.
No longer would my sister and I sneak downstairs on Christmas-Eve hoping to see Santa.
My mother always left out a bottle of Pepsi and an orange for Santa.
Next morning they would be gone, proving Santa had been to our house.
“How does Santa get in if we don’t have a fireplace? If he came down our chimney he’d end up in our oil-burner.”

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly. My sister Betty died of cancer in December of 2011.
• A “hook-and-ladder” is a type of fire-truck, specific to carrying ladders. Often hook-and-ladders are truck and steerable trailer. The hook-and-ladder Santa rode in the Thanksgiving-Day parade was a truck-and-trailer. A hook-and-ladder usually had a long mounted ladder that could be raised and extended, and pivoted. Cities (like Philadelphia) had long hook-and-ladders in case of fires in tall buildings. I think the American-LaFrance fire-truck behind the link is a hook-and-ladder, but it’s not truck-and-trailer.