Author Archive for M. Toole
Bass boat fleet arrives at North Pole
The first frozen bass boat arrived at Santa’s Workshop this morning. The craft, one of 15 purchased in November is specially designed to make use of an overabundance of elf muscle available at the North Pole.
But primarily it is a sign of the times due to great polar melting and the disappearance of icebergs, fish and mammal habitat. The bruised topography has dictated a new approach to survival in the Far North. What used to be massive chunks of ice is now frigid water, ever rising, ever-consuming. Climate change does not support sleigh travel even if the sleigh can fly.
“We got tired of all the deniers, the greed and the ignorance associated with the man-made crisis,” said Santa Claus, who, with the help of twenty elves guided the boat into a protected slip out of the wind. “Fossil fuels are responsible for the demise of our lifestyle and yet they are drilling just over the horizon.”
One elf chimed in: We’ve got more water than ice and snow – sleighs can’t cut it and reindeer don’t swim well. We’ll still use reindeer to haul our new boats over what snowy terrain remains. Citing a “little known fact” the elf said that it always took more than one sleigh to make the rounds on Christmas Eve.
“Now we will have enough bass boats to deliver presents to every kid on the planet, at least while we still have a planet,” he bragged.
News that the loyal elf faction here would be expected to take to the ores did not go down well. Many are not comfortable with the plight of the galley slave even for one night in December.
“It starts with one night then before we know it we’re in chains rowing through glaciers and ice mountains whenever Santa wants to go on a road trip or has business in Greenland,” squawked another puffed up elf.
The remainder of the fleet is slated to arrive this week and undergo major modification before the Yuletide begins. Each of the larger boats is named for one of the eight reindeer with other smaller vessels tagged for North Pol landmarks and Santas’ immediate family.
“If the destruction caused by human generated climate change is not addressed today we will need every boat and more to make it to dry land again,” said a visibly exhausted Santa. “Coal in their stockings hasn’t worked. Future believers may be writing me letters c/o Mount McKinley, Las Vegas or Mars.”
For a related piece turn to What to buy for a stranded polar bear? in Life On Ice
Nisei Christmas
“…Men speak of them well or ill; they themselves are silent.”
– Stephen Vincent Benet, Ode to Walt Whitman
One Christmas near Granada, Colorado in 1942 two soldiers sat in a dark cafe watching the snow come down. Snow was not a familiar thing to these two who would be shipping out for Sicily in a few days. There was no visible sun in the sky and the windows of the cafe looked as if they hadn’t been washed since the First World War concluded almost 25 years ago. One of the soldiers, Private Thomas Okamoto, would go on to be one of the most decorated fighting men in the European Theater. The other, also decorated, would serve for two years in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and see action at Salerno Bay, at Naples, at Cassino, and at Anzio. His name was Kiyoshi Nakamura. He was killed by a German sniper near Saverne, France in November of 1944.
It was in late December of 1943, just north of Naples, that Nakamura met my uncle Clifford, and shared the following story.
We were staring out the window onto the soggy Colorado street. Private Okamoto was talking about his uncle’s strawberry garden back in California. We were not afraid to go to war but we were afraid of what may happen to our families behind barbed wire at Granada. A tall, thin rancher stumbled into the cafe, ordered coffee and sent a bone-chilling stare in our direction. It wasn’t a hostile look, more one of astonishment, of lassitude. He turned tiredly away from us and asked the walls and ceilings if we were spies.
Then, without warning, he approached our table. We thought he must be drunk.
“Looks like snow,” he said. “How long you been in?”
Private Okamoto answered him, followed by a crisp sir. He sat down.
“I’ve heard a lot of you pups were joining up,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to stare but you two are the first I’ve seen in uniform. Where they sending you?”
“Afica or maybe Europe,” I answered, “for the time being. We’re nor supposed to talk about it.”
“Loose lips sink ships,” said Okamoto.
“You won’t see much snow in those parts unless you make it up to the Dolomites. Where are you boys from?”
“Santa Ana, California, sir. We are only here for two days to visit our families in the camps. They were moved here in October,” I answered. “We brought them Christmas presents.”
“My name is Walters, Frank Walters. I remember spending a cold, wet Christmas at Cambrai, in France in 1917. I was at Belleau Wood as well, and with the Brits at Chateau-Thierry after the Germans broke through in 1918. I survived. At least I think I survived. A lot of them didn’t.”
“My uncle Joe was killed in the Argonne Forest,” I said. “His father and mother had only moved to the California in 1880 and they were proud of their native American son. They were presented his Silver Star.”
“And now our government is involved with another war with Germany…and this time with those bastards, the Japanese,” said Walters, catching himself. He looked at the floor.“You got a lot of family interned here at Granada?” he asked.
“Most of them,” I frowned. “The others, a cousin and Private Okamoto’s brother are in the army. We are Japanese-Americans, you know.”
“I know,” breathed Walters. “Good farmers. Good family people. I don’t think they deserve what they’re getting. Scaliwags up to no good. War profiteers of another stench, but the country’s in a panic.”
“After Pearl Harbor it’s not hard to believe,” said Okamoto.
Walters returned to his previous state, not saying anything for a few minutes, just staring out the window and then to the door as if expecting a visitor.
“How old are you boys?” he asked, returning to the present.
“I’m 19 and Kiyoshi is 20,” said Okamoto.
“The same age as my Tommy,” said Walters, after a moment. “He was lost when the West Virginia went down at Pearl Harbor last December, he said as if still not comprehending the trauma. “It was a beautiful morning in Honolulu they tell me.”
We sat there in shock. After two days visiting Granada and 12 weeks in Georgia training to kill Germans, and perhaps even Japanese, we thought we’d reached a certain sense of numbness. Now we were sitting here with a World War I vet who had lost a son to the Imperial Navy, to young men our age, who looked like us.
“My name is Tommy,” offered Okamoto, stumbling over his words in some attempt to ease the pain that all were feeling by now.
“You’re all just children,” said Walters, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “We were children too and it’s another Christmas. Babies with guns and tanks and planes. Germans and Japanese and English and French. Dead because of incompetemnt, greedy and power hungry leaders, or are we just blood-seeking animals standing erect? It’s insane,” he shook his head methodically from side to side. “They put your families in camps and yet you volunteer.”
“No matter how bad things seem we must retain honor,” said Okamoto.
“Honor,” answered Walters, gathering his emotions. “You boys had better drop back a few notches on the honor and hold onto a little common sense when you get over there,” he said. The Germans are entrenched all the way up the peninsula. It’ll be no picnic.”
“It’s a noble war,” said Okamoto.
Walters smiled a distant almost shell-shocked smile and changed the subject to the wine he had drunk, the friends he had made and the women he had met in France during his war. He somehow remembered these things and pushed the other horrors to the side. We both hoped this would be the case with us, if we survived.
He then took us totally off guard and asked us to write him a letter saying that it would get to him in Lamar without an address.
“Just send it to Frank Walters,” he said.
We told him we’d send him a postcard from Rome or maybe Berlin and asked him to watch out for our families if he could.
“I’ll do that,” he said, getting up and disappearing into the snowstorm.
– Kevin Haley
Christmas Eve On Lonesome
It was Christmas Eve on Lonesome. But nobody on Lonesome knew that it was Christmas Eve, although a child of the outer world could have guessed it, even out in those wilds where Lonesome slipped from one lone log cabin high up the steeps, down through a stretch of jungled darkness to another lone cabin at the mouth of the stream.
There was the holy hush in the gray twilight that comes only on Christmas Eve. There were the big flakes of snow that fell as they never fall except on Christmas Eve. There was a snowy man on horseback in a big coat, and with saddlepockets that might have been bursting with toys for children in the little cabin at the head of the stream.
But not even he knew that it was Christmas Eve. He was thinking of Christmas Eve, but it was of the Christmas Eve of the year before, when he sat in prison with a hundred other men in stripes, and listened to the chaplain talk of peace and good will to all men upon earth, when he had forgotten all men upon earth but one, and had only hatred in his heart for him.
“Vengeance is mine! saith the Lord.”
That was what the chaplain had thundered at him. And then, as now, he thought of the enemy who had betrayed him to the law, and had sworn away liberty, and had robbed him of everything in life except a fierce longing for the day when he could strike back and strike to kill. And then, while he looked back hard into the chaplain’s eyes, and now, while he splashed through the yellow mud thinking of that Christmas Eve, Buck shook his head; and then, as now, his sullen heart answered:
“Mine!” The big flakes drifted to crotch and twig and limb. They gathered on he brim of Buck’s slouch hat, filled out the wrinkles in his big coat, whitened and his long mustache, and sifted into the yellow, twisting path that guided his horse’s feet.
High above he could see through the whirling snow now and then the gleam of a red star. He knew it was the light from his enemy’s window; but somehow the chaplain’s voice kept ringing in his ears, and every time he saw the light he couldn’t help thinking of the story of the Star that the chaplain told that Christmas Eve, and he dropped his eyes by and by, so as not to see it again, and rode on until the light shone in his face.
Then he led his horse up a little ravine and hitched it among the snowy holly and rhododendrons and slipped toward the light. here was a dog somewhere, of course; and like a thief he climbed over the low rail fence and stole through the snow-wet grass until he leaned against an apple-tree with the sill of the window two feet above the level of his eyes.
Reaching above him, he caught a stout limb and dragged himself up to a crotch of the tree. A mass of snow slipped softly to the earth. The branch creaked above the light wind; around the corner of the house a dog growled and he sat still.
He had waited three long years and he had ridden two hard nights and lain out two cold days in the woods for this.
And presently he reached out very carefully, and noiselessly broke leaf and branch and twig until a passage was cleared for his eye and for the point of the pistol that was gripped in his right hand.
A woman was just disappearing through the kitchen door, and he peered cautiously and saw nothing but darting shadows. From one corner a shadow loomed suddenly out in human shape. Buck saw the shadowed gesture of an arm, and he cocked his pistol. That shadow was his man, and in a moment he would be in a chair in the chimney corner to smoke his pipe, maybe – his last pipe.
Buck smiled – pure hatred made him smile – but it was mean, a mean and sorry thing to shoot this man in the back, dog though he was; and now that the moment had come a wave of sickening shame ran through Buck. No one of his name had ever done that before; but this man and his people had, and with their own lips they had framed palliation for him. What was fair for one was fair for the other they always said. A poor man couldn’t fight money in the courts; and so they had shot from the brush, and that was why they were rich now and Buck was poor – why his enemy was safe at home, and he was out here, homeless, in the apple-tree.
Buck thought of all this, but it was no use. The shadow slouched suddenly and disappeared; and Buck was glad. With a gritting oath between his chattering teeth he pulled his pistol in and thrust one leg down to swing from the tree – he would meet him face to face next day and kill him like a man – and there he hung as rigid as though the cold had suddenly turned him, blood, bones, and marrow, into ice.
The door had opened, and full in the firelight stood the girl who he had heard was dead. He knew now how and why that word was sent to him. And now she who had been his sweetheart stood before him – the wife of the man he meant to kill.
Her lips moved – he thought he could tell what she said: “GI up, Jim it up!” Then she went back.
A flame flared up within him now that must have come straight from the devil’s forge. Again the shadows played over the ceiling. His teeth grated as he cocked his pistol, and pointed it down the beam of light that show into the heart of the apple-tree, and wailed.
The shadow of a head shot along the rafters and over the fireplace. It was a madman clutching the butt of the pistol now, and as his eye caught the glinting sight and his heart thumped, there stepped into the square light of the window – a child!
It was a boy with yellow tumbled hair, and he had a puppy in his arms. In front of the fire the little fellow dropped the dog, and they began to play.
“Yap! Yap! Yap!”
Buck could hear the shrill barking of the fat little dog, and the joyous shrieks of the child as he made his playfellow chase his tail round and round or tumbled him head over heels on the floor. It was the first child Buck had seen for three years; it was his child and hears; and, in the apple-tree, Buck watched fixedly.
They were down on the floor now, rolling over and over together; and he watched them until the child grew tired and turned his face to the fire and lay still – looking into it. Buck could see his eyes close presently, and then the puppy crept closer, put his head on his playmate’s chest, and the two lay thus asleep.
And still Buck looked – his clasp loosening on his pistol and his lips loosening under his stiff mustache – and kept looking until the door opened again and the woman crossed the floor. A flood of light flashed suddenly on the snow, barely touching the snow-hung tips of the apple-tree, and he saw her in the doorway – saw her look anxiously into the darkness – look and listen a long while.
Buck dropped noiselessly to the snow when she closed the door. He wondered what they would think when they saw his tracks in the snow the next morning; and then he realized that they would be covered before the morning.
As he started up the ravine where his horse was he heard the clink of metal down the road and the splash of a horse’s hoofs in the soft mud, and he sank down behind a holly-bush.
Again the light from the cabin flashed out on the snow.
“That you, Jim?”
“Yep!”
And then the child’s voice: “Has oo dot thum tandy?”
“Yep!”
The cheery answer rang out almost at Buck’s ear, and Jim passed death waiting for him behind the bush which was left foot brushed, shaking the snow from the red berries down on the crouching figure beneath.
Once only, far down the dark jungled way, with underlying streak of yellow that was leading him wither, God only knew – once only Buck looked back. There was the red light gleaming faintly through the moonlit flakes of snow. Once more he thought of the Star, and once more the chaplain’s voice came back to him.
“Mine!” said the Lord.
Just how, Buck could not see, with himself in the snow and him back there for life with her and the child, but some strange impulse made him bare his head.
“Yourn,” said Buck grimly.
But nobody on Lonesome – not even Buck – knew that it was Christmas Eve.
Copyright 1901
by Charles Scribner’s Sons
ANOTHER GROPPO APOLOGY
We have grown tired of extending these seasonal apologies to Groppo the Elf and his battery of attorneys but in the spirit of the holidays we will reach deep and try to smooth a few feathers once more. First of all let us set the record straight. The short piece appearing in the November issue regarding Groppo’s heritage was, admittedly in bad taste. Moreover we really didn’t have photographs of the elf with local livestock even though we were assured that this was the case. The prints, as it turns out disappeared the night before this issue was to be put to rest and we were forced to substitute a story about the much maligned Spar City de-lousing effort and some color pictures of pretty Christmas lights at the one of our many private prisons.
Repeated references to Groppo’s relationship with booze were presented out of context so as not to endanger the reputations of local citizens (People he drinks with in town). Implications that Groppo’s physical stature and mental capacity are the result of his diet of bombardier beetle burgers, twinkies. rocks and pressed swamp grass, are true. This accusation can be verified by speaking to the elf’s personal dietitian and favored bartender.
Furthermore attempts at collecting damages from this publication by the family of Groppo have once again proven to be unfounded and illegal. We did not ever say that his immediate family were drug addicts only that the current inhabitants of his family tree looked like junkies and substance abusers. We never said they were alcoholics, but rather that they were simpole drunkards, since most are broom closet drunks and their public behavior, although suspect, cannot be chronicled.
Never mind all that. Let’s shake hands and part as friends, Groppo. After all you’re really no worse than most of us, especially when viewed through the rose-colored filter of the Yuletide.
– Editor
Santa Claus Canadian
(Ottowa) The red-clad warrior of Christmas has admitted his Canadian ancestry today much to the dismay of millions of fans south of the border in the United States. Humbug.
“We are stunned,” said a spokesman for retailers here. “Why would he mislead us? Why would he impersonate himself in such a cruel way? He should be punished!”
For centuries Santa Claus was considered to be a product of the U.S. since his trademark image was created by people like Thomas Nast, Clarence Horning, Frank Leslie and Winslow Homer. Despite these presumptions, the elf’s continued insistence that he reside at the brutal North Pole and his long association with Canada should have indicated a rat.
“People would prefer to gloss over the reality of a situation rather than consider all the possibilities,” said social scientist Margaret Swede of Cal Polygamy, a visiting scholar here. “Why do they think the Canadian kids always got their presents first? He’s been a rabid fan of the Maple Leafs since the first power play. He even goes to Bluejay games. That in itself shows substantial instability.”
What this disclosure will do to Christmas down in the colonies is not known but former Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has bravely offered to fill in until a new Santa is appointed, or the old one is exonerated.
“Santa has mislead us for too long,” continued Swede. “Even liberal academia will be slow to forgive him for this ruthless act.”
As an acting Canadian, Santa is also a subject of the crown (Britain) which may not go down well in Fenian circles.
“His mother was a Murphy,” added Swede, “ahh, but don’t they forget the ould sod when they make a few quid across the sea.”
After the holidays the United States will consider economic sanctions against the Commonwealth of Canada for harboring the bearded fraud. – Suzie Compost
