Maybe it was the time of day, maybe it was the mood. Whatever it was, I shocked my wife a few years ago when she casually mentioned she wanted to take our kids to Santa’s Village in northern New Hampshire. I shocked her because I said I’d go.
We had driven past the old park on summer trips to Maine. It sits along a tired stretch of tourist highway in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Flying by the park in a blur with the car stuffed full of children, dog, beach stuff, and food, Santa’s Village was a tall chain-link fence, water flume, Ferris-wheel towering over pines, large fiberglass Santa. The goal always was to get past the park without the kids seeing it. The goal was never to stop.
After Jackie staked out the plan to visit the Village, I Googled the park and learned in the cold gray fall it opened at noon. Our kids were still small; our son only five or so and our daughter still a toddler. I called my Dad and asked if he wanted to meet us for an afternoon with Santa, and we were off.
Out the door early on a Saturday morning. Slate gray sky and hard cold rain, heading north by northeast, driving into the most rural parts of Vermont; the rain started to fall sideways. And then it started to freeze. The salt trucks came out. The car was soon coated in a white grit. North of the small rail town of St. Johnsbury, the landscape is cold and hard and empty. Fallow fields and the abandoned Grand Trunk Railroad marked the drive. We moved north by northeast slowly, passing through a landscape not changed since the depression froze everything in place seventy plus years ago.
Just before turning into New Hampshire, far north in Vermont, we followed the narrow beginnings of the Connecticut River past huge worn farmhouses, replete with carriage entrances now sheltering old cars, lumber, lawn furniture. The road then swerves and we cross the Connecticut River near its source and are moved into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Finally, an hour and a half into the drive, we reached the filling parking lot of Santa’s Village. Row after row of mini-vans and late model sedans.
The park was not yet open so the crowd milled in the fine cold rain by the grand entrance. There were no complaints from the crowd, just talk. No jostling or frustration, just patient waiting. Lots of jackets with the names of fishing boats or manufacturing plants or union locals from all over New England. Grandparents and Dads and huge knots of Uncles and Aunts contained hordes of anxious kids. When the line started to move the father in front of us honorably told the cashier his tiny daughter was four, costing him seventeen dollars.
We walked through to another world. A steam train on tiny tracks crossed in front of us, a merry-go-round of reindeer spun nearby. My Dad met us in the park after a bit. He and my son took off hand in hand. Jackie, the baby and I made our own way through the worn fantasy world.
There was some waiting in lines but not much; there was great joy and lots of running around. Bumper cars and tea-cup rides, a sky-way tram, a mock steam train.
The men running the rides were thin and bored but not surly. They ran the rides with a relaxed air. The children go around and around until a large crowd has formed, waiting its turn. Using judgment, not a stopwatch, the men would take stock of the mood of those waiting, drop a spent cigarette into a plastic cup and turn the big metal handles to brake the gears and stop the ride. When the machine stopped spinning the gates would open and, without guidance or help, the children would all scamper off and new kids would scamper on. After a short wait for stragglers the men would throw the switch and off the ride would spin. With so little effort, the creation of sheer joy.
We went from ride to ride, my hands numb with cold, my baby pressed against my chest in her snugli, my son running from gate to gate, from ceramic elf to ceramic elf. My Dad needing a break.
We took time and bought hot lunch in the canteen. Chili and coffee, fat hot dogs, greasy fries, ketchup as a vegetable. It all came to less than ten dollars.
After we ate, warm and full, we headed out in search of Santa’s workshop. Next up was the chance to drive models of old Ford cars and trucks, built with small two-stroke engines and running on rails. Kids could actually drive the things. We careened around and around the little course.
And then the boy wanted to go. He’d had enough. There’d been not a whine or fit all day; we’d not gotten mad at a worker nor jostled by any other visitors; it’d been truly, deeply, un-ironically, fun.
The kids slept all the way home. Jackie and I talked. The rain turned to snow, and big flakes fell horizontally against the landscape. Back at the house I carried the kids in. I went back out and pulled the Christmas lights out of the barn. I strung them as the snow fell hard. Blinking colors jumped off the porch. I went in and made some coffee and cranked the wood stove.
I thought we expect too much of our entertainment today. We expect it to be glitzy and fancy and electronic. We don’t ever think it would be fun to walk around in the cold rain, riding old machines made to look like Santa’s toys. Contentment appears to be so elusive, and it is really right there, available, all the time.
David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2010 David Rocchio
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