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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1997)
NORTH «M TIMES — f VOL19NO2 50CENTS DECEMBER 1997 - Tkxbrt R^rHtkz DRAWING BY TERRY LABAN SNOWTIME FOR SANTA I saw the cops kick and club Santa Claus at the end of a downtown alley. I didn't have a video camera so I didn't interfere. They gave him a final kick, a last rap on the head (which was covered by a red stocking cap), looked around the alley and walked out onto the busy street. I should have stayed out of the alley. I was lucky the cops hadn't seen me at the other end, a witness to their violence. I didn't want them kicking and clubbing me. But I had to answer a question that occurred to me when I first saw him knocked down by a club swipe: Why had cops beat up Santa Claus? It was Santa Claus all right. He was fat and red faced, crawling on his hands and knees in a red suit that had fluffy white fringes on the sleeves and cuffs when I got to him. I was scared the cops might come back and looked out from the alley down the street. A large crowd of Christmas shoppers thronged the sidewalks. I saw the cops haranguing a group of people in the street who were carrying "Don’t Shop" signs. When I looked back Santa Claus was collapsed against a building wall holding his head and breathing heavily with a sort of rattle to it like something inside was loose. His eyes looked up at me in pain. "Why?" I asked horrified. "Why'd they do this to you?" He didn't answer at first. I thought he might have passed out (or worse) but his eyes rapidly blinked and his lips opened and closed a number of times before noise finally came out, more a series of groans than words. "They said it was a warning," he gasped, leaning the side of his face against the wall. His white beard was ragged and matted with blood. Tufts seemed to be torn out. "What the hell kind of warning?" I almost shouted, furious that Santa Claus was a victim of police brutality. "They said they knew I was flying snow in from the North Pole." He looked at me in confused pain. "Why would they get so upset about snow?” The absurdity of his statement struck me like a snowball in the face. "Besides, why would I want to carry snow with me the one time of the year I can get away from it?" He took off his cap and tenderly felt the top of his head where blood clotted in white hair. I was astounded. "The cops beat you up because they think you’re smuggling cocaine into the country?" I said in disbelief. He stared at me wide-eyed. "It's called 'snow'," I said. "A drug!” He seemed to forget his pain in his sud den indignation. He rose unsteadily to his feet against the wall and looked at me with rage in his eyes. 'They accuse ME of being a drug pusher?" They accuse ME of turning little kiddies into dopeheads?" Illogical — But so was Santa Claus himself. A fat elf hardly anyone believed in anymore, not even children. I wouldn't have believed myself except he didn't act like a store Santa Claus. Yet doubts assailed me. He looked like he was going to ¿eed. Probably not enough believers any more. Business suffering. Getting more difficult to pay for heat at the North Pole. I thought of many ways he could smuggle 'snow' in with the toys he carried — unscrew a doll's head and there's enough crack cocaine inside to blow off little sister's head His outrage cremated my doubts. He glared at me with the same kind of passionate fury that pictures of John Brown convey. I was confused, wishing I hadn't stopped. What was he doing here, anyway? It wasn't Christ mas yet! "A little scouting trip,” he sighed, reading my mind, and it seemed his rage dissipated in that little breath. His whole plump body shriveled like an old fruit. He started to hurt again. "I've got to do it these days," he said in a sad voice. "I can’t keep up with the changes. My customer base is so much different than it used to be." He leaned heavily against the wall. His eyes look ed me up and down as if appraising the kind of boy I had been. "Did you ever believe in me?" "Well, sure," I said. "Everybody does. Kids always think you're real." Another sort of pain, an older familiar psychic hurt, redrew his face into a very old man's. 'They don't think I'm real any more," he said. "At least normal kids don't. Parents don't encourage them to believe in me anymore — or anything else except making money." ’Yeah," I said, trying to track the turn of talk. "But don't you think you also encourage materialism by giving toys to kids?" He shrugged. "Maybe. But I don't think so. I know the arguments. And I think I don't do anything more than try to make kids happy for a few minutes once a year." "Why don't you give them something besides toys — simple things like.... " "Like what?" He smiled grimly. 'You don't think I've thought about it? But they want more and bigger and state of the art. That's what they ask for. High-tech stuff I don't know anything about and can't keep up with the demand even with the shrinking number of kids on my list." "So you're here getting ideas?" "Sort of," he said slowly. He held a silky handker chief to his head as a compress. "I'm also thinking of sell ing my name to a big toy outfit." "Little Asian girls make those toys in sweatshops," I said sharply. "Why not just smuggle dope?" He looked at me in sad contempt. "Easy for you to say. You're not a bygone icon who likes to eat well and doesn't like to be cold. I think I've got one last chance before everybody loses faith." He softened and said apologetically, "Christmas shows people know how to make a profit out of their spirit ual bonhomie. They like to give presents to each other and ring up a lot of sales for the stores they work in. So I figure I deserve a slice of the fruitcake after a century of toys for tots." I was about to give a sharp rebuke about the odius irony of Santa Claus sleighing on the backs of children when I heard feet crunch into the alley. The cops were back. "We told you to get out'a town fatso," one snarled, slapping his club against the wall. Santa Claus cringed. I ran. Just before I got out of the alley I turned around and saw the cops kicking and clubbing Santa Claus just like they did before. They probably finished him off this time. -MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER Thanx to the San Francisco Examiner for the story about a Santa Claus who was beat up by police for singing Christmas carols outside a dinner for handicapped persons, which inspired Terry Laban’s cartoon for In These Times that in turn sparked my spin on it.
