By TomL
This is a true story. When I was a little boy we were being raised by my Grand Mother while our parents worked out of town at the Boca Raton Hotel. One day just before Christmas my friend and I were playing near the Railroad tracks. We were bare footed. I jump off a little hill and landed on a broken beer bottle. It cut my heal pretty bad. I could see everything inside, my tendon was almost severed. The other boy piggy back me to the road and ran to the Fire Chiefs house. luckily to the Fire Chiefs home was close by. He wrapped me up and picked me up, put me in his truck and took me to my house where my grand mother was. They could tell they could not fix the wound. So the fire Chief took me to a clinic in the next town Hollywood. If the tendon was almost severed back in them days if it was severed you were crippled. They managed to get clamps on my tendon and pull it back into place and staple it. My parents were called. They picked me up at the clinic and I was told I would not be able to start walking for at least two months.
Christmas school brake was a few days away. Christmas was a big thing to me. It was not because of the gifts but the fact that I would see Santa Claus. After all I only saw him once a year. Every year there was a Christmas parade. That night I was very sad because I could not go, I could not walk. Grandma told my sister she could take my brother and walk two block to where the parade would come down US 1. Grandma could not walk very far. I was sitting next the slide up window listening for the firetruck that carried Santa Claus in the parade, finally I could hear the siren and the horn on the firetruck. I sat there in the window almost crying because I would not see Santa.
The sound of the siren was getting louder as they down the Hwy. Then it was getting louder and then louder and it came down our residential street. They stopped at my house and Santa got off the truck and brought me a candy cane. He gave me a hug and said Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas and walked out the door got on the Firetruck and proceeded back to the why where he detoured off the hwy. I was beside myself, Santa came to see me.
It’s funny that Santa looked kind of similar to the Fire Chief. I wondered until a few years later.
Interesting fact was his son was drowning in whiskey creek and I jumped in and pull him out. He was knock out cold by a speed boat that came to close to where we were swimming.
Thats my TRUE Christmas story.
