(Tom Jirik’s columns originally published by the Boone Today)I awoke with a start. I instantly new that someone was in our house.
I instantly knew someone was in our house. I could hear footsteps and rustling sounds from down in the living room.
Keeping in the shadows, I nervously tiptoed down to the living room. The room was bustling with activity of nearly a dozen tiny little men. They had long beards, tiny little hard hats and pointy little shoes.
Several were busy stripping and sanding the painted -over woodwork in our living room. Others were repairing our sticky double-hung windows. They worked silently and efficiently, using the latest in pneumatic sanders and nailers. Several of them had cordless drills holstered on their hips.
I slipped past them and ducked into the kitchen, only to find another industrious group at work. They were busy replacing chipped and cracked ceramic tile. Several others were intently working to replace some sticky drawer glides in our kitchen cupboards.
To avoid notice I crept through the basement door. I crept down the stairs and found another crew of workers there. One crew was jacking and reinforcing sagging floor joists while another was mixing concrete to shore up our crumbling basement walls. Yet another group was stringing new electric wiring across the ceiling to replace the aged wires there.
Suddenly, a large figure whisked past my hiding place in the shadows. He wore red coveralls, trimmed in white. A heavily-loaded tool belt encircled his waist. He strode in purposeful strides across the basement in shiny, black steel-toed work boots. A face marked by twinkling eyes and white beard was capped by a cherry-red hard hat. He stopped and had a brief discussion with the workers who were working on the floor joists. He unrolled a set of blueprints on top of the furnace and made a few notations with a pencil that he pulled from behind his ear.
I closed my eyes. My mind was reeling. Dozens of little carpenters, electricians and plumbers were at work in my house on Christmas Eve. Was I having some kind of dream? A hallucination? Did I have too much eggnog? Was it just me or did the foreman look suspiciously like Santa?
I stumbled up the stairs and out the door. I needed air.
Outside the world seemed normal. The air was crisp and clean. The stars twinkled brightly. The neighborhood was quiet and dark. All was as it should be. Then I remembered an odd encounter from weeks earlier.
As I was exiting the hardware store, I collided with a man in a Santa suit. “Ho! Ho! Ho! Young man,” the man said. “What do you want from Santa this Christmas?”
“I wouldn’t mind having some help fixing up my house,” I replied jokingly.
“I’ll visit with my elves and see what we can do. Ho! Ho! Ho!” he said, and then walked away down the street.
A noise from the roof drew back to the present. There in the moonlight stood a sleigh surrounded by eight lounging reindeer. A portable generator and air compressor purred away quietly in the back of a red sled. A tangle of hoses and power cords snaked across the roof and into the chimney.
Suddenly, dozens of tiny workmen scurried from the chimney. They coiled the cords and hoses and packed away their tools. Finally the foreman climbed out of the chimney, dusted off his coveralls and climbed into the sleigh. As the reindeer began to take up the slack in the harness, the foreman turned and looked down at me from the roof. He tipped his hard hat and said with a voice that boomed across the chilly rooftops, “Merry Christmas, Tom!”
And with that he snapped the reigns, and reindeer and sleigh flew off into the night. As they disappeared into the darkness, I noticed the sign on the back of the sleigh. “S.Claus, general contractor. Call us for restoration, renovation or remodeling.”
I awoke with a start as Mary planted an elbow in my ribs. “What was that for?” I asked as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.
“You were yelling in your sleep,” she said. “You kept saying, “Thank you, Santa! Thank you, Santa!”