By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
On our way to the Master Gardeners Christmas party, where we were both ordained official Master Gardener Interns, Shelly told me she had seen the real Santa Claus that day. She had this sparkle in her eyes, and her words tumbled out like an excited kid.
She and Douglas have been helping with Nancy Jackson’s huge estate sale in Tool, and after the main days of the sale were past, there was still lots of good stuff left, so the two of them have kept it open for a while as they continued to sell to a steady stream of buyers.
Shelly told me that this big old guy came in, wandering around checking everything out, doing a little friendly haggling, but she was busy and didn’t pay him much attention. Finally she stopped long enough to look up and when she did, she couldn’t help staring at him…round belly, rosy cheeks, big white beard and all. He just looked her in the eye and in a commanding voice said, “That’s right. I’m Santa Claus.” He went on to tell her he’s pretty busy, even before Christmas Eve gets here, going around to all the Shriner Hospitals as well as showing up to other groups of children around here. He told her her his job had got so big he had to get a helicopter to get around everywhere he needed to go. Shelly told him he sure looked real to her. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. They talked a while, and he bought some stuff, and as he left he asked her if she would like a goodbye “Ho Ho Ho.” “I sure would.” she said.
He waved goodbye and let loose the deepest, mellowest, magical ho ho ho Shelly could imagine. She said it just rolled out.
When he was gone Shelly turned to Douglas, “ I think it was really him.” and Douglas replied, “I’m certain it was.”
Now I’m pretty sure down deep maybe both of them knew that THE Santa wasn’t in Tool, Texas last week, heading for the Learning Express in Malakoff the next day. But I think they chose to take that little gift of Christmas magic for all it was worth. And I guess it was worth a lot, because when she told me about it, just for a minute I was right there with them in a world where magic still happens.
Now getting back down to earth, I’ve got to tell you how proud Shelly and I are to become Master Gardener Interns. For the next year we will be doing a lot of volunteer work, such as helping with the vegetable garden at South Athens Elementary School, the Dream Garden at the Arboretum, work at the greenhouse at TVCC and a bunch of other things. There are nine of us new interns—six women and three men. We love these people who have become good friends and with whom we will still be working and playing this year. A bunch of really excellent, interesting people. I could fill up several columns telling you about them, and maybe I will later. Turns out more than half of us are from Malakoff and the lake area. In fact there is a whole nest of Master Gardeners on one street that I pass every time I go to town. Three generations of them. If they will let me, I’ll tell you about them one day soon.
I had another big treat last week. I went to see Athens High School’s wonderful production of “Into the Woods.” It was fantastically great. They went to Dallas or somewhere and rented fabulous costumes, so it was visually gorgeous, but the really amazing thing was the music. There had to be twenty or more kids in this, and this was a musical, so it was more singing than talking, and every one of those kids was great. I mean, they were way too good for high school kids. And of course, from this Granny’s perspective, Taegan Allen as Little Red Riding Hood was perfect and deserved an Oscar. If you can find it, I wish you would watch it, because then you will see how remarkable it is that a high school group could perform something of that quality. I wish they could do it again, so more people could see how good it was.
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. I intend to. Our whole family will brunch at Tina’s house, then a bunch of us will adjourn to Liz’s house where we will dine on Gumbo, some of which I am working on right now.