Ray

[Jolly]

Lots of good things happen around Christmas. One of my stories I haven't told...

Ray lives a couple of miles down the road from me. He's a typical good ol' boy with a couple of science degrees...but just because you can take the boy out of the woods, you can't take the woods out of the boy. He's a Levis and Justins guy, complete with the Skoal ring on the jeans. He's big, he's tall and he'd probably whip your butt on less ground than you can stand on, given much of any provocation.

Lee works at a another hospital in the same town where I work. His wife has long been active in collecting and distributing Christmas toys for disadvantaged (read poor) kids. She is an amazing and tireless organizer and logistician. If Santa has any trouble, he might just want to hire this woman. As typical in marriages, Lee is so laid back, he's horizontal, while his wife has the temperment of a Jack Russell.

A few years ago, I received a call at work from Lee. His wife was doing her usual annual thing, and he wanted to organize a little contest between all of us floor moppers. Never one to turn down a challenge, my shop started to collect toys for Lee's wife. We didn't collect the most toys, but I thought we made a pretty fair showing. Come Christmas Eve, we took our list of families, checked to make sure we had everything tagged properly and piled the toys in the back of Ray's pickup. We tarped over the load, because it was looking a bit like rain, maybe mixed with some sleet.

So here we go...Ray's Victory Red Z71 Chevy leading the way. We even talked Ray into wearing a Santa Claus suit and he made a good-lookin' Santa...all of 6' 3" in his black Justin cowboy boots.

Ray checked the directions and drove out of town a few miles, eventually locking in the AWD to negotiate a dirt road and finally pulling up to an old, ratty trailer. The water and mud that had splashed over the pickup's exhaust turned into steam, framing the truck in the glare of our truck's lights. As little stair-step Mexican kids poured out of that sardine-can trailer into the rain and sleet, Santa stepped down out of that red chevy, wreathed in white smoke and doing his best "Ho, ho, ho!".

The smallest child, a little bare-foot girl in a stained and mended dress, ran up to Ray and threw her arms around him. Her head didn't even reach up to his belt buckle.

She looked up at him with shining, muscadine eyes and exclaimed, "You ARE real! You are!".

We didn't have the heart to laugh at ol' Ray, when the first words out of Santa's mouth, were "Sorry, darlin'. Santa's got to go pee". And he stomped off behind the trailer and soaked his beard with tears.

It was the best gift Ray had ever received.

The red pickup is gone, now. Years pass, machines wear out, and a white Z71 has taken its place. But today, a certain rough and burley, big redneck will drag his Santa suit out of his wife's hope chest and a cadre of hospital elves will help him make his appointed rounds...


Merry Christmas and may God Bless us, everyone.

[fordy]

..............Thanks for the good guys , they make lots of poor kids happy at Christmas !! , fordy

[braggscowboy]

Wonderful story and the kind a person likes to hear. I appreciate the good read and the feel good feeling at this time of year. I would like to help everyone that we can, but there are so many. Thanks again for the story and Merry Christmas to you.

[Stann]

Originally Posted by Jolly

Lots of good things happen around Christmas....

That's so true. It's why I like Christmas, even though I don't celebrate (I'm Jewish).

Good story, and well said. I missed your other stories. I'll be sure not to miss the next.

Merry Christmas to all.

[Jolly]

I often tell about something that happened at Christmas, it's a magical time of year...this one is From The Piano World Forums, 2001:

My wife and I traveled to Lafayette Saturday to watch ULL play ULM, but mostly just to watch our son in ULM's drumline. Since we were already in Lafayette, we thought we would stop by Gitz music and try out a few pianos.

As we were shopping, a young Asian couple came in with their daughter. She was a beautiful little 9 year old and she must have only known one song really well, because she played it on every Kawai vertical in the place. Mama helped steer her from piano to piano, while Daddy talked to the owner about price, features, etc.

My wife was trying out a K&C 52" Millenium across the store from where the little girl was playing on the Kawais. She had run through several old Southern gospel tunes, some Gaither stuff, and a couple of pop ballads. So I knew what was coming next - a Christmas song. You have to understand, my wife was raised dirt poor, and Christmas was her family's big event of the year. Her mother and father's families are huge and the only time of the year they get together(still do) is at Christmas. They sing, play instruments, dance, roast pigs(couchon de lait) and have a wonderful time. So it's no wonder I hear Christmas carols in July.

As the first few notes of "Silver Bells" traveled across the shop, the little girl stopped playing on the Kawais. She walked over to where my wife was playing and just stood and stared, with a wide grin on her face. My wife said hello and asked her if she'd like to join her. The little girl couldn't play the song, but she asked could she sit with my wife on the piano bench. My wife picked her up, set her on the bench, and played her heart out.

About halfway through the tune, the little girl slipped off of the bench and grabbed her mother's hands and proceeded to dance between the aisles of pianos with her mom, laughing all the while. Daddy and the store's owner clapped in time.

Must have been an awfully dusty piano shop, since I couldn't seem to make my eyes quit watering.

Everybody left happy. The owner recieved a check for one of the Kawais. The Mom and Dad got a new piano for their home. The little girl with the big, soft, dark eyes and the wide grin left with a beginner's arrangement of "Silver Bells" underneath her arm. My wife and I enjoyed an early Christmas present of a child's pure joy.

Some days are really, really better than others!

[texcyn]

Great stories. Thanks for sharing and Merry Christmas.

[barnyardgal]

I like nice stories like these~~there are some good ole boys left ~~

Merry Christmas~~

[Jokarva]

I like your stories, thank you for sharing them

[clovis]

Thank you for sharing one of the best stories that I have ever read on Homesteading Today...and I have been here since late 1999.

[Jolly]

Both of the above Christmas stories are true. I like them...everybody like happy endings. True stories don't always end quite so well, but they still teach us things about life.

The following is something I wrote on an internet forum to young man, Derick (not his real name), during a discussion on children. He had had a rough childhood, he was going through some financial difficulties, yet his wife wanted children. He just didn't know whether he could help bring another child into the world.

Another little Christmas story...

A story about one of the saddest events I've ever experienced:

A young man, Rodney, worked for a flooring contractor. Rodney was a big, husky guy,early thirties, with blondish hair and a short-trimmed beard. It was the week before Christmas, and even though his wife was working as a waitress in a local diner, money was awfully tight, and it looked like Santa's bag was going to be kinda thin. That probably didn't matter much to his one year old boy, but his four year daughter had her heart set on a pink bicycle, with training wheels and tassels on the handlebars.

So Rodney borrowed a few tools from his boss, and was doing a little "side job" for cash at a local bar re-tiling the restroom floors. He needed some help, so he asked his first cousin to lend him a hand for a couple of nights, which his relative gladly did. The second night of work on the job, Rodney heard shouting coming from the barroom, and one of the voices was his cousin's. He ran out of the restroom and tried to get between the two men, who were arguing over an unpaid debt. A man he had never met, and did not know, shot him twice in the chest with a 25 ACP.

When they brought Rodney through the back doors of the ER, he was in pain, but talking. There was no blood froth on his lips to indicate a lung shot, so the surgery prognosis was hopeful. We wisked him to surgery after a quick set of chest x-rays. I was trying to hurry and get the appropriate blood products ready to go, in the probability he needed a transfusion.

The surgeon made his opening and started to probe for the bullet. This was before the time when a CT machine was in every hospital; the surgeon had no inkling there was an aortic anyeurism waiting to burst. And blow it did, shooting a stream of blood splattering against the white surgery walls. The team managed to get the spewing bleeder clamped, but not before a massive loss of blood. They hung 20 units of blood in OR and several more in recovery.

Rodney's wife had arrived while he was in OR, and in a frigtened, trembling voice was asking the Nursing Supervisor about the condition of her husband. The story of why he was where he was at, changed the attitude of the OR staff. No longer were they fighting for the life of just another drunk who got himself shot in a brawl, they were trying to save the life of a man who only wanted to buy Christmas presents for his kids. News travels at the speed of light in a hospital, so within the hour everyone knew the story of the GSW in OR.

Never before, and never afterwards, have I seen a group of medical professionals try to cheat death like we did with this man. Nurses refused to go home. Doctors slept on the ICU floor. The lab set TAT records with his CBC and Chemistry values. The President of the United States would not have recieved better care, given our resources.

But Rodney kept slipping down the slippery slope of DIC, one PT/PTT at a time. The staff prayed and cursed under their breath, but their was to be no Christmas miracle this year. I still remember the look in his wife's red-rimmed blue eyes, as she silently looked at me every time I took a couple of more units of A pos to ICU. She would stand out in the hallway, just outside ICU's doorway,still in the waitress uniform, many times holding her little girl at her side. The child was not supposed to be on that floor, but for some reason, Security could walk right by, and never see her.

We took Rodney back to Surgery twice more on the following two days after his attack. I put 56 units of blood, 22 units of FFP, and 40 units of Cryoprecipitate (numbers I will never forget) in him before the End. I helped stand the code blue, when he finally went into cardiac arrest. The DIC had finally exhausted his clotting factors, and he was bleeding internally and externally, even bleeding from his eyes. But even then, we tried. God, did we try!

When he was finally pronounced that Christmas Eve morning, tears fell like rain on that bloody ICU floor. We unhooked the tubes and cleaned up the room, changed the sheets. The longest walk I have ever seen a human being take, was when the surgeon shuffled towards the ICU door, to tell Rodney's wife he had just died. I still hear the screams of that woman sometimes when I am half-awake. But the saddest thing I ever heard, was the crying voice of a little four year old girl, trying to persuade Santa Claus to give her Daddy back; that she didn't want that pink bicycle, just her Daddy.

I assisted in the autopsy on Rodney. It was evident right after we opened his chest, that there should have been no way this guy should have lived 30 minutes, let alone two days. But then again, he had something to live for.

Why this sad long tale? I just wanted to illustrate how important life can be. And I also wanted to give Derick a little light at the end of the tunnel. You see, the wife still lives in the community, I see her from time to time. Time has healed a lot of old wounds, but she admits not all of the scars will ever heal, and she copes as best she can. She re-married - had another child with her new husband. Even after all these years (17 to be exact), she still thinks about the good times she had with Rodney, and talks often about how proud he would be, knowing how well his children turned out. I think she has found happiness.

So Derick, give it a little time. Scars heal, at least somewhat. Children are God's blessing and something your wife wants to give you - an expression of her love for you. One day, the time will be right.