On a recent trip to Florida, I was having breakfast at a local coffee shop. It was a beastly warm summer morning and the last person I expected to bump into was Santa Claus. But there he was at the next table, scarfing down a serious pile of pancakes while Mrs. Claus daintily dabbled with her eggs. I immediately feared the chef put the wrong kind of mushrooms into my omelet, but that thought quickly passed.\u00a0
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This guy had the jolly old St. Nick look down cold. His familiar red suit must have been out for dry cleaning, because Santa was dressed in a red T-shirt, Santa pants with red suspenders and a red ball cap. Of course, he sported a fluffy white Santa beard, through which the pancakes somehow magically disappeared. Why he wasn\u2019t cooling off at the North Pole instead of visiting blowtorch-hot Florida remains a mystery.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he caught me staring at him, Santa arose with such a clatter and arrived at my table with a business card that had his picture on it. As he approached, I could read what was written on his red cap: \u201cYes, I am.\u201d And so he was.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I left the coffee shop, I looked for a sleigh or team of reindeer atop the building. Not seeing either, I figured the sleigh must be in the shop for new runners. Then I saw a red trailer parked off to the side of the parking lot and thought perhaps the reindeer were scrunched together inside it. Moving closer, I listened for noises and heard none. That\u2019s a good thing, as I have no idea what kind of noise a reindeer makes.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Driving down Highway 41 the next day, I spotted a funeral home immediately adjacent to a mobile home park for seniors. \u201cHow very convenient,\u201d I thought. When old Howard\u2019s time is up, just leave him in that wheeled patio chair, roll him next door, sign a few papers and get back to your doublewide before the noodles boil over.
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Visiting with my nephew one evening, he asked if I\u2019d like to accompany him to the mailbox. He and his wife live in a new subdivision and the mailboxes are in a clump two blocks away. As I stood to go join him, he said he needed to get his pistol.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat? Wait!\u201d I managed to garble. \u201cWhy do you need firepower?\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told me alligators and wild pigs often frequent the mailboxes and one needs to protect oneself. I told him a better idea would be to drive to the mailbox in the daytime when you could actually see what was going to eat you. He agreed and put his pistol away.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think the next time we get together, it\u2019ll be at my Santa Claus coffee shop. You never hear about reindeer attacks there.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a recent trip to Florida, I was having breakfast at a local coffee shop. It was a beastly warm summer morning and the last person I expected to bump into was Santa Claus. But there he was at the next table, scarfing down a serious pile of pancakes while Mrs. Claus daintily dabbled with … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-non-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-vl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1946,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/1946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
For over two decades, Jim was creative director at two top U.S. advertising agencies. During these years, he created marketing\/communications for a number of familiar products and brands. He’s now enjoying life as a freelance writer and frequent pickleball player. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"