The day Santa suffered from stage fright
Now, I was dressed in a candy-cane stocking hat, green T-shirt and red sweatpants. I also, at the time, played guitar and sang Jimmie Rodgers folk songs, so I took my Gibson 12-string with me. I planned to lead the kids in a couple of sing-alongs, and then Santa would make his entrance.
The first crisis of the day came when some future Mensa member put two and two together and yelled out: “Hey, you’re too big to be an elf!”
“I was adopted,” I retorted, which I thought was a pretty good comeback, considering it was also 35 years before the movie Elf was produced. The children seemed to accept that and we continued with the sing-along.
After 15 or 20 minutes of me strumming my guitar and us singing and me promising that Santa would be arriving at any second, I announced that, indeed, the sleigh had landed and he was on his way.
Now, we had rehearsed this. Although Rick was usually the life of the party, we didn’t want to leave anything to chance. The plan was for him to run into the classroom, dash up and down the rows of desks, stopping to give a child here and a child there a quick squeeze of the shoulders, or a hug, and to finally sit down to answer questions and make all sorts of promises. The most important part, though, was the HO, HO, HO! He could do anything he wanted and say anything he wanted, like MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! But he couldn’t forget the HO, HO, HO!
Anyway, while I was teaching the kids the words to a song called “The Fox and the Goose,” Jeanne was down the hall in the teachers’ room helping Rick get dressed in the Santa suit we’d rented. Two things are important when you are filling in for Santa: the beard has to be on tight, and you have to tuck not one, but two pillows into the front of the suit because Santa is a jolly old elf and anybody who is jolly is usually chubby.
In any event, Jeanne gave me the signal and I said ( just like Ed McMahon introducing Johnny Carson), “HEEeeeeEEERRE’S Santa!” And Rick comes running into the room. And he runs up one aisle and he runs down another. He’s running up a storm. But there are two things missing. He is not stopping to hug any kids and he hasn’t let loose with even one HO, HO, HO!
The room is completely silent except for the sound of this big, fat guy with a white beard and wearing a red suit, running up and down between the rows of desks. The children, meanwhile, are looking at this guy, unsure as to who, or what, they are witnessing.
My God, I think to myself. My pal, Rick Clair, a man who’s never quiet, has gone silent because he’s suffering from STAGE FRIGHT!
I think fast. “Santa seems to have laryngitis,” I say to the children. “He must have caught a cold on the flight down from the North Pole because, otherwise, he would be going HO, HO, HO! and wishing you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! “HO, HO, HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
It was the second HO, HO, HO! that did it. Rick snapped out of whatever state he was in and got with the program. Before long, the children were all over him, asking about Rudolph and Mrs. Claus (Rick said she preferred to be called Ms. Claus) and reminding him about what they had requested for Christmas. He, of course, hedged about whether he would be able to deliver the goods, but promised that he would do his best.
Within a half hour, we packed up and left, driving out of the school’s parking lot in Rick’s Ford Fiesta. Asked about forgetting his lines (which was really kind of hard to do, considering that HO, HO, HO! and MERRY CHRISTMAS are not exactly difficult to remember), he said he’d seen those innocent little eyes all looking up at him with such great expectations and he’d frozen.
That weekend, we were all at my parents’ home in Willowdale. “You guys were a big hit with my kids,” said Jeanne. “When you left the classroom, they all ran over to the window to watch the sleigh leave.”
“That good, eh?” said Rick. “We should do it again — now that I know my lines.” But we never did. As always happens, it seems, times change and people change. I lost contact with Rick, his brother Dave and other people I worked with in Oakville.
Life goes on — but there are holes. Top to toe in tail lights, I got red lights on the run, But soon there’ll be a freeway, yeah Get my feet on holy ground . . . When I went to Pembroke to work on my second newspaper, the Daily Observer, I had two really good friends: Roger Stanion and Dave Getz. Dave — or “Getzy,” to his friends — was a reporter at the same paper while Roger was a disc jockey at the local radio station.
The three of us liked to hang around. Dave had a 1950s Chrysler and we had wonderful times driving across the Ottawa River from Pembroke to Quebec to drink beer at a hotel in Fort Coulonge, or right out on the beach at Fort William, or to enjoy dinner at a roadhouse called the Chez Charles or at Freddie Mejeur’s island hotel (where you could buy beer out the back door after the tavern closed on Saturday night).
Roger went to the 1964 New York World’s Fair with me. We took in a New York Mets game at the brand-new Shea Stadium, managed to get out on the roof of the Claridge Hotel overlooking Times Square (we were staying there) and hung around Shubert Alley in hopes of seeing Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, who were appearing in a Broadway play. We had a Simon and Garfunkel-type folksinging act (with a little bit of Smothers Brothers-type comedy thrown in) and talked our way onto the stage at the-then world famous Gerde’s Folk City bar and coffeehouse in Greenwich Village by lying through our teeth about where we’d played in Toronto. (No internet in those days for anybody to check.)
Dave moved from the Observer to the Cornwall StandardFreeholder, Kitchener WaterlooRecord and the Ottawa Citizen before finding his true calling at CBC Radio News, where he also met his wife, Maria Mironowicz. I remember once, when he was the CBC’s labour reporter, some union was on strike at the “Corp” and he refused to cross the picket line to go to work. That took guts. My first wife and I had a wonderful friendship with Dave and Maria, but we broke up and the friendship sort of petered out too. I think I saw him once afterward — but that was it.
Two years ago, in this annual Christmas column, I wrote a story about Roger and I going to Montreal. On a whim, I decided to see if I could find a photo of him and Googled his name, and up came his obituary instead. I just about fell off my chair.
You can imagine my surprise this past February when I got en email from Ron Getz, Dave’s brother, telling me that my old pal had died of cancer the previous May and he wondered if anyone had told me. I was floored.
Not because anyone should have contacted me — I mean, it’s been years — but because I read the obituary pages in the Star every day. I don’t go to the obits to check up on my friends; I read them because there are some great stories there.
I did a search and it turned out that Dave’s obit had been in the Star on May 24, 2017. I would have been in Indianapolis for the 500, which was held that year on the 25th. It didn’t help, but I felt better because there was an explanation.
There is a photo attached to this column today. Dave is at left, Roger is in the middle and I’m at right. We were at a cottage near Pembroke. I don’t remember anything about the woman — although I certainly seemed interested in her at the time.
Whatever, it feels strange to be the only one of the three of us left. So I sing for you, Though you can’t hear me, When I get through, And feel you near me, Driving in my car, I’m driving home for Christmas. . .
For years, my family has held our holiday get-together early to avoid conflicts that inevitably pop up on Dec. 25. So we are all at our house this Dec. 22 to exchange gifts and tuck into the turkey.
I’m not suggesting that everybody do this, but it works for us because they can then go wherever they want on Christmas Day and we get to sleep in.
Christmas is also a time when I sit back and think about all the people I’ve had in my life, to laugh at some of the memories and to lament the fact that some of them are no longer with us. And to vow to reach out to some I’ve known in the past and invite them to lunch — and then to really do it rather than just talk about it.
I missed out on doing that with Roger Stanion and Dave Getz. No more, I hope.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Christmas is a time when I sit back and think about all the people I’ve had in my life, and to lament the fact that some of them are no longer with us