Christmas was goofy at our house

December 12, 7:53 AMSouth St. Paul ExaminerRob Shirk

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Christmas Eve Fire

My father was a curious individual. He was known as a character around town, an eccentric, if you will.

He lived in Oelwein, Iowa all his life and never strayed except for the WW 2 years where he served honorably as an officer in the U.S.Navy in the Pacific Theater. He had a droll sense of humor.

He was a graduate in economics from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, and though most economists are certainly not known for their humor, his was active and alive all the time. He loved Christmas most of all...

My mother was getting busy one year gathering items for the Goodwill store in town and viewed it as a necessity to clean out the house and get ready for another year of collecting things she viewed as silly or unnecessary. This project took her quite a while and I recall her saying some not so nice things as she worked.

I can't believe you brought this home and expect me to keep it! Out it goes and if you argue, out the door with you, too.

Dad watched from afar as she huffed and puffed and put the bags in the car. She drove down to the Goodwill and deposited all the stuff she didn't want and worked so hard to get rid of. My father followed her down, unbeknown to her.

He waited until she left and then proceeded into the store where he bought back everything she had given and gift wrapped all of it and placed them under the tree for Mom to open Christmas morning. My mother, I recall, was not that amused, and whatever Christmas spirit she had in her heart that blessed morning dissipated faster than Santa Claus.

The milk and cookies for the Jolly Old Elf were replaced in our house as Dad proclaimed, with a solemn persona, that by the time Santa reached northeast Iowa he had had it up to here with milk and cookies. What Santa really liked was a gin and tonic and Triscuits. I still remember, fifty years later: Lots of ice, use lime not lemon. If he lived here in the Twin Cties of Minnesota, he'd probably even want a bowl of Booya.

On Christmas Eve, my brother, sister, and I would gather in the living room where Dad would encourage us to make the fire as big as we could in the fireplace and if we waited long enough, Santa would come down the chimney and burn his "you know what" and we would forever know that there really was a Santa. Well, put three sleepy kids in front of a crackling fire and it didn't take long for the eyelids to droop and for sleep to overtake us as we were carried off to bed.

Late at night he would creep downstairs, get his galoshes, vigorously rub them in the ash of the fireplace making a mess of the area, and make footprints out to where the presents were, further proof to us of the true existence of Santa Claus and further infuriating my mother.

He was a peculiar fellow, my father.