A Train For Under The Christmas Tree

by Chas Johnson

  All eyes went to Tom Benton. He was assigned to be the judge, a job that no one thought was going to be needed, but here it was a judge was needed.

  The Mayor continued, “Maybe I’ll just drop these back into the bin and spin it again and redraw. What do you think, Tom?”

  Tom craned his neck, and for reason that later he could not recall why, he asked to see the three tickets that had just come from the bin so that he could inspect them.

  The Mayor was more than happy to hand them over to Tom, as Kevin snapped a few more photos of the mess up. He could see the headlines in the Saturday paper, ‘Mayor Screws Up’. The Evening Sun was not his biggest fan any way and this would be fodder to them.

  Tom Benton looks at the three tickets and with great glee announces that there will be no need for another drawing. “All three tickets have the exact same name, so I declare that person the winner. So let’s get the winner on the phone so that all of Hanover will know who is going to have this lovely train under their tree come Christmas morning.”

  Chapter 26

  It was Friday December 20th, at 6:45 PM. Jimmy’s family had just finished dinner, and since it was Jimmy’s birthday the family would have cake and ice cream a little bit later. The kids were excited as today had been the last day of school for a full two weeks because of the Christmas and New Year’s Holiday. Jimmy’s mom was cleaning away the table after the meal and had a cake baking in the oven. Jimmy’s dad was in the living room with the television tuned to the CBS Nightly News with Walter Cronkite. Friday night was not normally a family’s favorite for television, they’d not be allowed to watch the Twilight Zone at 9 o’clock since it was too scary, and after the Twilight Zone was followed by the Friday night fights at 10 PM, which the children were definitely not allowed to watch. But tonight would be different, tonight the Bob Hope Christmas with the Troops Special would air with Bob Hope and all the regulars, Jerry Colonna, Phyllis Diller, Tuesday Weld and Anita Bryant and this year there will be a very special costar in Bing Crosby.

  Jimmy had gone up to his bedroom after eating and was excited about his party, but he knew not to be too excited as it was only four days until Christmas and his birthday presents would be meager again this year just like every other year. Suddenly there came a knock at the door. Jimmy’s father answered, finding a blond haired man with pouty lips standing on his porch, and a few seconds later he called up the stairs for Jimmy to bring the wallet down.

  Jimmy never thought that this moment would actually come. He believed that the wallet would never be claimed. In a way he was glad that it did come because now he’d get the recognition that he believed he deserved. No longer was he the black sheep of his family, for now he was the guiding light, the beacon of truth, the moral high ground, and half a dozen other platitudes that need not be mentioned. And he’d get his cash reward that would put him over the top for his train purchase, the train for under the tree on Christmas morning. He fumbled through his nightstand drawer, pulls the wallet out and rushes down the steps. The stranger in the living room had a cross look on his face, as if he thought that Jimmy had done something wrong, or at least it made Jimmy feel as if he had done something wrong and he said to the man, “All the money is still here, Mister.”

  Chapter 27

  The return is completed, Jimmy with a sheepish grin of expectation mixed with a bit of fear on his face, handed the wallet to the blond haired stranger with a scowl on his face. The stranger flips open the wallet, dances his fingers through the bills and discovered that in fact everything is intact. Yet he is ungladdened, he shakes his head, as if in argument with himself an argument he had just lost. He shrugs and half-heartedly says, “Thanks.” Turning for the door, he steps back into the night.

  As if he’d been slapped in the face, Jimmy turned and ran up the stairs to his room, realizing that his hope for a train under the Christmas tree was gone. ‘What a jerk,’ he thought, and he wasn’t sure who the biggest jerk was, that man or himself. He pulled out his cigar box were he kept his cash and gazed at it while he sat on the edge of his bed, fighting off the desire to cry. A fight he was about to lose. Jimmy’s mom was busy trying to finish her cake, hoping to get the family to the table and sing Happy Birthday in order to lighten up the mood in the house. Just then the phone rings and Jimmy’s sister, who was certain that the call was to be for her, answered.

  “Call for Mister James Johnson, is he available?”

  “Ah, yes. Ah who’s calling?”

  “Is Mister Johnson there, this is Myers Pharmacy calling and this call is being broadcast live on radio station WHVR 1280 AM. May we please speak to him?”

  Holding the phone receiver out at arms-length towards her mother, Jimmy’s sister yells, “Mommy, it’s the radio station calling for Jimmy!”

  Chapter 28

  Jimmy woke on Saturday morning at 5 after 5 and was dressed and downstairs shortly thereafter ready for breakfast. His father would want Jimmy to work at the bottling plant today, so Jimmy’s plan was to be out of the house before his father got up. A bowl of Frosted Flakes and Jimmy slipped out the side door and into the early morning dark and cold. He walked to the center square and peered into the widow of Myers Pharmacy only to see that the train, his train, was no longer displayed and had been replaced by an ad promoting an athlete foot preventive.

  He stood there shivering wishing that there were someplace that was open where he could go and wait until it was time to claim his prize, but he could not think of any such place except maybe the church. ‘What the heck, there are worse places to be than church, at least it’ll be warm,’ he thought. So off he trailed the three blocks to his church. To his surprise as he pushed open the big wooden doors that led into the naïve of the old building, he saw that there was a Mass being conducted. The priest had mounted the dais to deliver a sermon to the congregation, just a moment before Jimmy arrived, a total of fifteen souls not counting the altar-boys. There was no turning back now, so into the church he crept and placed himself into a rear pew and joined in the ceremony. When Mass was over everyone left the church and Jimmy had decided that he needed to go a tell Tommy Mack about the events of the day before and how the man with the wallet had not given any reward, in fact he barely even thanked him for returning the wallet, but it didn’t matter since he had won the train set from Myers Pharmacy.

  Chapter 29

  Myers Pharmacy typically opened at 9 AM Monday thru Friday, but on Saturday and Sunday the store did not open until 10:30 AM, allowing the employees, specifically Ira Myers, an opportunity to sleep in and relax a little bit on the weekend. Ira didn’t like the fact that he had to work on Sunday but the Rexall at the mall was open Sundays and therefore he was forced to provide equivalent store hours. But Ira was running late today, he had been at the store late the evening before with the drawling and the festivities around that, and the necessity to convert the window display away from the Christmas theme and back to everyday business. Ira was very concerned about the effects that the stores redesign and the seasonal merchandising was having on his business, so he did some intense research into sales, profits, foot traffic, and the like. And there was one other thing that had bothered Ira. ‘How in the world did the mayor drawl out three tickets out of all those tickets with the same name on each?’

  So he dumped all of the tickets out of the bin and he went to work sorting through the hundreds of entry blanks from the bin. At first he was sifting through to find those with the name James Johnson on them, but as he did he noted that there were other tickets with duplicate names, so he started to stack them in various piles by the first letter of the last name and then he would do each pile and organize the tickets by full name and he used a ledger sheet and marked the names and then the count of tickets on behind each name. To his surprise the name James Johnson came up forty seven times. This explained the fact that all three tickets had the same name of the three hundred and eighty eight tickets, forty seven were the same, and this represented over
twelve percent of the entry blanks. Then Ira noticed another remarkable fact in his count.

  As a result Ira was a bit late opening the store on that Saturday. But he had but one customer waiting when he arrived. It was a teenage boy with a black eye.

  When the boy identified himself as James Johnson, Ira laughed and asked, “Where’d you get that shiner, son?”

  Jimmy just grinned and said that he had a fight with a buddy.

  Ira said, “His name wouldn’t of happen to be Thomas Mack would it?”

  Jimmy was shocked that the man knew the name and wondered what kind of trap this might be. ‘How could he know?’ Standing there unsure of where this conversation was going but certain that he didn’t want to mess anything up now to prevent him from getting the train he decided that he needed to answer the man and be truthful. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess, you see I did a count on the entry blanks entered to win the train and I found that you had entered quite a few, in fact forty seven, which really cut your odds down, but there was one name in the box more times than yours and that was Thomas Mack. So I guess he wanted the train as much as you and when you went to rub it in his face he bopped you in the eye. Right?”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  Chapter 30

  When Jimmy returned home, after carrying the train in the box that it was packaged in, the mile and a half back to his home, he was surprised to see his father car was still parked in front of their home as he was certain that his father would be at the bottling plant working and that he would have to face the music for not working later, but it would have been worth it he thought because he had his train. Now he was not so sure. He decided to go to the side of the house to make his entrance since that door led to the kitchen and there was a good chance that his mother would be in the kitchen and that would delay his punishment for a little while at least. He pushed open the door and then struggled to get the box into the house only to discover that the only person in the kitchen was his father.

  “What’s you got there? Woah, what happened to your eye?”

  “Tommy Mack sucker punched me when I told him I won the train and that he wasn’t going get any reward since I didn’t get any, and this is my train I won.”

  His father took the box from him and held it up such that he could see the display on the top of the box showing the train. “Very nice. Okay, let’s go.”

  Jimmy’s heart sank. He didn’t want to go down to the stupid bottling works, not today any way. He wanted to set up his train and see it run, even though there was no tree to place it under. It had been a long held tradition in the family, as it was in many other families to get their tree and decorate it on Christmas Eve. The whole family would participate, furniture would be moved, the tree positioned in a prominent location in the living room where Santa would be certain to find it, lights would be strung – this was the father’s job as safety of the lights on the tree was paramount – then ornaments were added and finally the tinsel was applied. Meanwhile mother would be baking cookies and preparing the hot cocoa for everyone to enjoy before bed and of course to be placed by the youngest child in front of the tree along with a carrot for Santa and his reindeer to enjoy a snack during the long trip around the world.

  Jimmy shrugged as his dad gently placed his prize on the kitchen table. They went to his father’s car, got in, and drove off. But instead of going east towards the plant they headed south, out the Westminster Road. Jimmy wondered, ‘Where are we going?’ But he knew not to ever question his father, he’d find out when he got there. They drove about six miles and then the turned right and headed west when Jimmy realized that the only thing out this way was Sterner’s Tree Farm. They were going to get a tree, just him and his dad and it was still four days until Christmas. Jimmy thought, ‘This is the best day of my whole life!’

  When they pulled up in front of the sales office and parked, Jimmy’s dad got out and walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk and took out a saw, then yelled to Jimmy, “Come on! Let’s go find a tree that will look good enough to have your train under it.”

  Chapter 31

  Sandy had made her father promise that he would not do anything to harm Jamison. As much as she would have liked to see him pummeled for what he did to her, and she was certain that her father could pummel Jamison, she would not condone violence against anyone for something that she was at least partially to blame. But that didn’t prevent him from speaking to his good friend Lawrence Sheppard. Sandy’s father owned and operated Soft Hide Leather Inc. a major supplier of leather for making Hanover Shoes, and he provided Hanover Shoe very fine quality leather at cut rate prices. Two weeks later Sandy’s father made his way to Lawrence’s office unannounced and lodged a formal complaint against Jamison Tate. It was a very non-specific complaint on the matter that he considered Tate to be “of low character.” That was enough for Lawrence, that plus local governmental regulations restricting plans for building and operating a new factory in the Paducah area had already forced Lawrence to reconsider his decision to move the facility to that location. Now a negative report on the character of one of the key links to the Kentucky location and Lawrence was swayed. The new location for his factory would be the second choice of his review team. He told his secretary to make travel arrangements to this new location, he needed to get conformation from the Town Council on tax deferrals and wage caps for the workers. He made a note to deal with Tate upon his return.

  With a favorable deal struck and when Lawrence’s returned he heard of the rumors that Hanover Shoe was going to open a new facility in another town. Word had slipped out from the vaulted executive offices that a new facility was in the planning. But the scope of this venture had not been divulged; everyone assumed that it would simply be a distribution center somewhere in the western or southern part of the country. Speculation ranged far and wide from California to Florida, a lot of people thought Dallas and some said Denver. Jamison was asked for his thoughts by one of the other workers and he casually said that he didn’t know anything but that he had hoped it would be in the south like maybe Tennessee or Missouri or even Kentucky and that way he could transfer back closer to his home. Jamison congratulated himself for being crafty and not spilling the beans that he knew that the facility was going to be in Kentucky, then he chuckled to himself at how easy it was to fool these stupid people from Pennsylvania.

  When the call came for him to report to Mister Sheppard’s office Jamison thought that his lucky day had come, he would get his transfer early and be out of the awful small minded town. This plus the fact that earlier that day his father had called from home and told of a letter that had come to the house about a lost wallet and he now had the address where to pick up his missing wallet. Things were indeed looking up, he could now go home for a Christmas vacation, have the money for all the things he needed to do and look for an apartment and start his life of being a traffic manager for a major company that would have all the perks that he wanted. He went to the men’s room and checked his tie making sure that his suit was lint free, and then he took a deep breath to relax himself, puffed out his chest and strode into the executive suite. Confident that he was on the way up, he whisked past the secretaries and Lawrence Sheppard’s personal secretary and directly into the bosses office.

  “Close the door Tate. This won’t take long.”

  “Yes Sir, Mister Sheppard.” The door closed firmly giving a slam as it settled into its frame.

  “Tate, we have decided to go in a different direction. Paducah turned out to be a bit, shall we say complicated, so we will not be needing your services any longer. You may pick up your severance package in payroll on your way out of the building. Good day.”

  “What? Are you firing me?”

  Lawrence who had in his mind already moved on to the next issue at hand, looked back at the young man, and saw a glimpse of the low character that he had been told about, and said, “When we fire someone they do
not get a severance package, we are parting like gentlemen, you will get four extra weeks’ pay and travel money back home. Have a good rest of your life. Now please leave so that I can get back to running my business.”

  Tate turned and opened the door and stepped out, then turned and looked back over his shoulder and said, “You’ll be sorry you did this.”

  But Sheppard was reading a press release that one of his staff had produced to go out about the new facility and did not hear the retort.

  Chapter 32

  The rule was clear, very simple, easy to follow, and applied to everyone. No one, for any reason, was allowed to go down the stairs on Christmas morning before 6AM. Jimmy had, of course, on a previous Christmas broken this rule, descending the stairs at a much earlier hour, only to be encountered by his father and even though he had opened one of his presents under the tree by the time his father had caught him, he received the standard punishment. He was not allowed to open or play with the rest of his presents until after the family returned from Christmas Day Mass. So it was a lesson learned and like everyone else in the family Jimmy now knew that the rule was the rule and this Christmas Morning he stood in his bed until the appropriate hour and then he scurried down the steps to find his presents.

  But this year it was different, Jimmy did not rush into the living room and rip open his presents. No, instead he went straight for the train transformer, he grabbed the plug, pushed it into the nearest outlet and cranked the throttle full ahead.

  The little train responded at once rushing into the first curve and under the overpass that the figure eight track used as a crossover. The little train gathered speed, headed for the portion of track under the tree and at the next bend the entire unit flew off the track and crashed into the wall, breaking part of the smokestack on the engine away. A quick inspection and Jimmy realized that the damage to his train was minor, something that could be fixed with a little Elmer’s glue, so he reloaded the unit on the rails and sent it off on its loop, only this time a bit slower.