Santa and his rocket ship

Long before Carter Osterhouse's parents even considered that they would meet, marry and have a child that would become a grade "C" celebrity on DIY type TV Shows devoted to Christmas decorations rivaling the Las Vegas Strip, this display in Marion, Ohio was everything in the world to the children of that city, and even spending the holidays with their grandparents who lived in that city.

In those days, Christmas lights were large C7 bulbs, that got hot, and blew fuses, or worse, didn't work because one or more of the bulbs had gone bad.  A string on this bush, a string on that bush, some over here, or not at all.

In Shaker Heights we were Jewish, 24/7, except for school hours, when the teachers decorated and teased us with stories where good giels and boys were rewarded with gifts and perfected happiness.  But if you were Jewish, it stands to reason that you are not going to celebrate the birth of someone who is going to take away three forths of your dues paying members at the temple and claim to be the Messiah. 

That meant: No Christmas trees.  No Christmas music.  Nothing.  We did get Hanukkah, but lighting a candle each day and possibly getting a gift a night was nothing like what Jean Shepherd called the "unbridled avarice" of Christmas morning.  One night an extended family member Syd and his wife Florence stopped by the house during Hanukah and passed out flash lights to my cousin's children (I was eight, and she was like 30) but they had none for me.  So Syd told me that I was too old for Hanukah presents.  I cried.  I'll cry again when someone takes away my car keys and says I am too old and blind to drive, too.  But that was like a knife.  So Florence whispered something in his ear and Syd realizing what he did ran out to the car and pulled the first thing out of the glove box - the car's manual.

HERE!  He handed me the manual to his ancient car.  I was instantly smitten with it.  Pictures, instructions on how to shift and clutch.  Best present ever. BUT Hanukah was a dangerous proposition, still because it was all spread out.  Everyday was a crap shoot.

Meanwhile, my cousins on my mother's side, who were not spoiled like I was, at least got presents on Christmas morning.  All I got was a bowl of Cream of Wheat, no friends to play with and nothing on TV but Sermonette.

THAT changed with my parents first divorce when I was but wee Cookie.  That was when my mother would scoop me up and over the river and down I-71 we would travel to my grandparents house for a week of shopping, presents, unending food and the feeling of safety lacking for me in Shaker.

My mother's people come from a long line of Methodist Episcopal's (They were the evangelicals in that faith until the civil war, then they were the Northern branch of the faith until the 1940s) and Baptists.  While the family respected God and the heavens above, and Sunday was viewed as a day of rest, I can't ever remember my grandparents going to church for anything but a wedding, the occasional baptism or the all too frequent funeral.  So Midnight Services was replaced by a big meal, one present, and a game or six of an old pinochle variation called "Horse" for the adults.  I would watch and get tired, my Aunt Mrytle (a shirt-tail Aunt) would watch folks play the game and let me lie down on the couch and rest my head on her lap and I would conk out.

Christmas morning was as it should have been. Tons of presents and toys.  Anything to shut Cookie up. Amen.

Cleveland had Christmas lights.  Better still, it had NELA Park, the GE labs in East Cleveland that in those days went bonkers with enough lights that they could have been seen in space IF anyone was up in space in those days.

But they didn't have this display.  And this display was everything to generations of children and adults.  It wasn't the biggest or the brightest.  But it was the BEST thing ever.

The two men behind it was obviously geniuses, both electro-magnetically and creatively, and the there was nothing like it at any place in Central Ohio in the 1960s and the 1970s.

The set up went like this.  Take a basic national homes ranch house, build a long-range TV antenna structure at the garage end (Marion is 50 miles from the nearest TV station, and in those days there was no cable) and then string a wire from the front door to the top of the tower. They needed three plastic Santa's - one on top of the gable over the front door, and one at the based of the twenty-five foot tower.  Then they needed one crescent moon, and three rocket ships.  The rocket ships were mounted to the wire and connected to the electric.

In the basement was the control panel with the motors and switches to control the contraption with a simple 1-on 1-off, 2-on 2-off, etc. serial.  When 6 switched off, the cycle ran without flipping a switch for a bit more time than the one/off cycles, and then the cycle repeated.  This went on for hours.  And it made it look like Santa popped out of the chimney, hopped in his rocket, which flew into space, landed on the moon, and then he appeared again at the base of the tower like he took an elevator down.  One of the granddaughters said that while the family was upstairs they could hear the relays and motors turning and clicking.

Yes, one had to surrender the idea that Santa used a sleigh and suspend disbelief that he had a rocket ship.  But it was glorious.  We would pull up in the car - it was a few blocks from my grandparents - and I would press my nose to the window and watch it and watch it and keep watching it until my mother got tired and we drove off.

But WOW!

The downer came when we went back to Shaker, and I tried to tell people about it and they thought I was lying.  They also thought that I lied about the pneumatic tubes and capsule systems that the department stores, Frank Brother's and Uhler's in Marion, used instead of cash registers.   I would have liked for them to believe me - that Christmas light Santa flew a rocket ship over a house on Sefner Ave, or that while shopping my grandmothers money was sent some place with a sales receipt though a vacuum tube,  only to be returned to the correct counter with the exact change.

After we moved to Marion full time, the lights, the rocket, the star still drew us out in wonder - even in high school.  Even those of who were clueless how to create anything like this knew it was possible.  One night my best friend and I were headed back to my house when we parked in front of the house and got out of the car to marvel at the display.  There was a sidewalk bench advertising the mom and pop dry cleaners around the corner, and one of the high school stoners was sitting their, high as a kite, with his "special lady", a skinny girl best known for getting sent home from school for wearing halter tops.

"HOLA, and seasonal greetings, gentlemen!" he called out.

We walked over and he offered us his joint - being the straight arrow teens that we were - for fear of anyone finding that we were gay (Hell, I had no clue my best was queer back then) we thanked him, but passed.

"Suit yourself, but me and Angie were taking in the sites. This shit over here," he motioned at the display - "is wild.  I call it Kamikaze Santa.  Dude pops out of the chimney steals the rocket and blows it the fuck up on the moon as goes all Robinson Caruso.  Maybe the kids laced his milk and cookies with hash."

Angie chimed in with "Isn't he," pointing at Stony, "so  Awesome?  I love the way he can see it straight, and in the abstract."

The idea that Santa would steal a rocket is blasphemy.  Part of my five year old self emerged.  Santa would never steal anything, let alone a sleigh.  And even if he did steal the rocket, he'd bring it back, because Santa doesn't take things, he gives things to good boys and girls.  And besides, the moon is made of cheese.

Well, what about the Santa at the bottom of the TV Antenna? If Santa went and blew himself and the rocket up, how do you explain that he's there?

Stony looked at it and continued to look at it and looked some more until five or six cycles had passed and then said "I need one more toke over the line sweet Jesus, to figure that out."

That was Stony then.  Today he and Angie have grandchildren and he likes President Trump.  Pot will destroy your brains people.  That shit will fuck you up like it did Stony.

Fuckin' aye! Molly Hatchet and all.

Now that I am much older, I miss those days and wish I had paid closer attention to the people around me and the neatness that was my life.  No other kid got to experience a life like mine, and see and live in two different places that were so different from each other.

It was a charmed childhood in Shaker, but nothing could compare with the simpler times in that old Ohio town at Christmastime.  Even with Santa flying a rocket to the moon and back.