I'm Dreaming of A Kind Santa

I've been wading through my brain trying to dream up a Santa Claus, treading water when necessary to define my ideal grandfather type with endless generosity and no apparent faults. I have images of a cross between Wilford Brimley, Lionel Barrymore, and Mr. Elliker (an elderly man from my church who always has a kind word and is witty, loyal, smart all in one. He used to be a high ranking official of the NSA, which could be creepy, but it hasn't effected his image as a grandpa).

Mr. Elliker aside, my own grandfathers and my fading memories of them keep getting in the way. My paternal grandfather, Robert Wells, was a crotchety old man who worked in the shipping yards along the Tennessee River in Alabama. My father often talked about his mother, but I don't recall ever hearing him talk about his father except to say where he worked and that he liked to clog a bit when his boys played their fiddles and banjos. Since the man died when I was only one or so, I never knew him, but my mother has described him as a curmudgeon, a wrinkly old black-hearted man who kept a KKK hood in his shed for "special occasions." There was no proof he was ever a klan member, but he liked to talk big (or small).

I did know my maternal grandfather, Guiles Onie Maner. I have some good memories of visiting him in his house on Mountain Home Road in Trinity, Alabama. He was tall and broad, and he smoked compulsively, never taking more than a few drags from any one Pall Mall so that by the end of the afternoon, the back yard was littered with butts, thin streams of smoke trailing up above the grass.

My maternal grandparents.

Granddaddy was a whiz at checkers, a top hand at Rook, and a hunter. He kept a few hounds that he didn't want me to pet because too much kind attention would ruin them, he said. They were working dogs. In his mildewy tobacco stained house he kept an old trunk like something from the HMS Bounty that he bought in 1914. He had managed to hang on to it through countless moves and struggles and kept it full of old pictures and books and odds and ends, barnacles of all of the up and down waves of his life.

When I was very young, my image of Granddaddy was like that of Wilford Brimley as his role in Cocoon, a benevolent fun-spirited man who would make a suitable Santa. But as I got older, I became more aware of his rough and unpleasant edges, and he seemed more like Wilford Brimley as his role in The Firm. During one of our yearly visits, he caught a squirrel, skinned it in front of me, put it in a bowl and said, "Go take care of this."

What? "Go take care of this?" A skinned animal in a bowl? What does that mean? I had not defined myself as an Inside Girl at that point in my development, but I was edging toward the door, and to be handed a skinless thing with no clear instructions pushed me all the way into the vestibule. I put the bowl on the back porch and walked away. The dog ate it, bones and all, and Granddaddy was very angry.

One of his favorite tricks was to say, "Hey, ya know how a horse eats corn?" "No, Granddaddy, show me," says the innocent Yankee school girl. Then the big man would stretch his arm out of his sleeve, grab my leg just above the knee, and with a grip not unlike a bear trap, squeeze until the screaming would cause one of the aunts in the kitchen to shout, "Leave that poor child alone!"

So, for Guiles Onie Maner to be Santa would be more like a nightmare than a dream. I would expect to wake up on Christmas morning to a pile of possum innards in my stocking or an ashtray full of smokey butts wrapped in old newspaper under the tree.

The kind of Santa figure I'm dreaming of would bring me little gifts all year round just to be thoughtful. Nothing extravagant. Nothing expensive. Nothing that would warrant too much awe but would inspire gratitude. Maybe he'd give me his pocket knife one day with a quick whittling lesson, and then on the next visit he'd bring a deck of cards so we could play on the porch. My grandmother gave me a little racing turtle once just because she thought I would enjoy it. My cousin threw it in the grass to run wildly threw the maze of smoking butts, and I never saw it again. So, a new little racing turtle would be nice to make up for what that stupid Zania girl did. Just to be thoughtful.

And I could keep all of these little treasures in a closet that smelled like cedar, a closet that would be my own North Pole so I could open the door anytime I needed a little Christmas cheer. Well, if it's Christmas cheer I'm looking for I suppose my private cedar closet/North Pole would also have to have a minibar with the makings of a frosty cosmopolitan, and a little elf to mix it up for me. Just to be thoughtful.