Santa Claus Lives On
Part 2: A Street Named Santa Claus
Part 1 of this story is here.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, my grandmother, Dee, continued running the shop at Santa Claus, even though the town was already fading. The Christmas thing all year long had been losing its appeal for some time, and developers were purchasing properties with very different plans in mind. But she kept at it.
Somewhere along the way, Dee took some writing classes and began to record her hopes, dreams and memories of a good life. She wrote of the thrill of seeing Charles Lindbergh fly into Salt Lake in 1927. She went running through a field for a closer look, with my six-week-old mother cradled in her arms. She wept at the death of JFK, and again when she watched on television his widow and children walking behind the casket.
She wrote of taking their youngest daughter, three-year-old Julie, to Harry Blackstone’s magic show. They knew that he liked to invite a child up on the stage to help him pull a rabbit out of a hat. But Julie couldn’t wait. She climbed onto the stage and flatly demanded her rabbit. Blackstone insisted that this girl’s parents must please come up and retrieve their daughter. Dee and Dutch slunk into their seats, pretending no relation to the flighty little girl. She described her embarrassment:
I glanced under the seat in front of me to see if there was enough room for me to crawl under it. Truly I’d like to have fallen into a hole in the floor and pulled the hole in after me.
Uninhibited Julie quickly became part of the act, at one point looking all over for a disappearing bird. Dee continued:
She turned her back to the audience and leaned over looking under a chair and her skirt made a full circle showing her ruffled panties. The audience roared with laughter.
Near the end of the show, Julie got the rabbit and held it tightly as she ran off the stage.
“Look Mommy, I got my rabbit.” The audience, like one big wave all turned their heads as they followed her with their eyes to her mother and father, who both wanted to be swallowed up there and then.
Later in life, little Julie would eventually help her mother with the store and even ran it on her own for a time, doing what she could to keep the dream alive.
For those of us who grew up with some traditional Christmas inspiration, Dee’s own childhood experience seemed to hit a bullseye:
Christmas was a great day at our house. I can’t think of a happier time than when Jody [her brother] and I slipped out of bed before day break and tiptoed to the doorway where we quietly opened the squeaky door to peek in the parlor. Our hearts beat fast. There the glistening tree stood with its shiny tree top touching the ceiling. Even the smell of the pine boughs was a thrill.
“Look,” I exclaimed. “He did come.” I knew Santa had been to our house because that jolly old man always decorated our tree.
“And look, he has left us lots of toys,” said Jody. “He left me a train.” We were both so excited.
“Shush, you’ll wake up Mom and Dad,” I cautioned him.
This was real happiness. Yes I’m sure Mom and Dad were quietly in their bedroom enjoying the excitement of their two young prowlers.
I recently reread my grandmother’s stories wondering what inspires some kids to grow up to be thoughtful, generous people, and others to lose their way in the darkness.
In the fall of 1984, Dee arrived at work one day to find that Santa’s Trading Post had been vandalized, windows broken and thousands of dollars in merchandise either missing or lying on the floor in sad, broken heaps of pottery and glass. She was devastated, not just by the obvious financial loss, but by the mindless invasion of her privacy, her life’s work to bring a modicum of happiness and Christmas joy to others. She wrote later that she was stunned, almost dizzy to think anyone could be so cruel.
The sheriff investigated, took fingerprints, but no one was held to account. She worked long hours to clean up the mess. When she returned the next day to finish the job, she found that a water leak had flooded the entire place. At 77 years old, she was still cleaning it up at midnight. Though she worked hard to put things back in order and carry on the tradition, she also knew that Santa Claus was dying on the vine.
In 1986, the old Santa’s Kitchen with the reindeer on the roof was sold to a developer. The building was immediately next door to the Trading Post. What happened next seemed just as disastrous as the break-in two years prior. Dee wrote:
The day after the new owners took possession, the local television crew was there at Santa Claus taking pictures. Ten men were on the roof and pushed a huge sleigh off the roof onto the ground, breaking it into a thousand pieces. All this was photographed by the television cameras and shown on the local newscast that Sunday night.
She wrote that she’d heard the new owner on television say:
“Santa Claus must go up to the North Pole where it is cold. We don’t want him here on the beach anymore.”
She described their plan as a “street of restaurants with perhaps a gift shop or maybe a motel.”
What a dreamer! He has only purchased a few buildings in the center of what is known as Santa Claus, California. . . This person [who] knocked down the sleigh had been a property owner on Santa Claus Lane for one day. I have been there for more than twenty-nine years and he is not telling me what I can or cannot sell in my shop on Santa Claus Lane.
Another story was related to me some years ago, though I’m vague on all the details. My recollection is something like this:
When Dee was 80, she did something almost radical. She walked to work one day. Eight miles rings a bell, although her home in Santa Barbara was closer to 15 miles from the shop. Regardless, it was a good, long walk. She’d told me years before that it was something she wanted to do some day. As a young person, she’d enjoyed hiking up in the Wasatch Mountains above Salt Lake. So finally, she just did it. I wish I could have walked with her, assuming I could even keep up. I think someone she knew spotted her and wondered if she needed a lift. Perhaps she was becoming a little off-kilter. No, she was just fine, she would have said, proudly completing her walk.
On New Year’s Day 1989, Dee was driving home from the shop on a familiar route. No one is quite sure, but it may be that she blacked out when she ran the car straight into a tree. Her body impacted hard against the steering wheel causing an internal rupture of her aorta or maybe another major artery in her heart. At the hospital she required immediate surgery. They gave her a fifty-fifty chance. Our dear grandmother Dee didn’t make it.
I’d planned to visit her the previous Christmas holiday, but got sidetracked and delayed my trip. And of course, I kick myself for not going. We all thought Dee was invincible, and would still be running her shop at 100. If not for the accident, she may have very well proved us right.
I recall hearing brief speculation that maybe she drove into that tree on purpose! That her time had come. But when I look at her writing, she has this to say about that:
I have had a good life with few regrets or wishes that I had taken another path along the way. . . If growing old gracefully is accepting the woes and problems of old age, I prefer to grow old ungracefully, fighting like a wild cat to keep all of my five senses in good condition. . . If the time comes when I get lost and you find me wandering miles away from home, you’ll know I lost the battle, but if I live to be more than a hundred years of age and still enjoy my five senses, then you will know I won the game.
Indeed, my grandmother lived a good life. Into her eighties, she kept good care of herself, while also keeping alive what virtually became the last functioning relic of Santa Claus Lane.
Well, almost the last, but not quite.
Thank you for writing this. My mom and I visited Santa Claus Lane for my birthday this year.