‘I Still Believe in Santa’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?—Virginia O’Hanlon, a question published in the New York Sun on September 21, 1897

I still believe in Santa Claus.—Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas, seventy years later.

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She was an elderly woman in a hospital near Albany, NY, on Christmas Day 1969. When a hospital maintenance worker who always dressed as Santa for Christmas came around her room, someone thought to take a photo of the handshake between Santa and Mrs. Douglas, who looks quite delighted indeed.

Mrs. Douglas and Santa shared a long history together, and they still do. Christmas is a day in which we can re-meet ourselves, re-meet ourselves as children, experience a sensation of faith if not faith itself. A little photo from 1969 of an elderly patient with Santa is a small glimpse of one such small moment.
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Everyone Loves a Parade

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

That time I almost led the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade by accident.

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Each Thanksgiving morning I experience the flutter of a memory of a moment in which my own experience of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles almost came true. Mine was going to involve accidental participation in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade between my bus and train, however, which is a notion that even the late John Hughes might have rejected as far-fetched.
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60 Years

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The two saddest photographs in my memory both commemorate a tragic historical event that might not have happened, an alternate reality: a daylight photo of an iceberg with a streak of dark paint along its waterline that was seen from the deck of one of the ocean liners that rescued survivors the day after the Titanic sank. The other is a photo of the presidential limo in which President Kennedy lost his life earlier that day, but with its bulletproof top installed. It was about to be loaded on the plane back to Washington, DC.

It was a sunny day in Dallas sixty years ago today, so the top was deemed unnecessary for a brief parade across the city. I saw a presidential motorcade once myself, in 2004. It was a sunny day in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that day, too, but there were no convertibles to be seen. The specific route was not published; the city block I lived on included the arena at which President Bush was to hold a campaign event, so streets near my apartment building were blocked with large equipment.

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