Christmas Memory —Billy & Stevie go to Ford Rotunda
Way back in the days of yore, or back in the 1950s anyway. As a kid, Christmas time was about the greatest thing to come down the pike. The only close rival to Christmas, might have been summer vacation. As we counted down the days to Christmas we had a lot on our minds. Number one, we had to try to behave and not destroy everything we had worked for during the year. But it seemed like the closer it got to Christmas, the worse we got and the easier it was to slide into bad deeds. It might be being mean to a sister or another kid in the neighborhood. It could also mean, not doing any of the small chores that were required of us by our parents. Maybe we didn’t do our homework or tried to stay up too late to watch television. (Note —as a kid, once the calendar rolled onto December, time, at least for us dragged on forever. 25 days seemed like 25 weeks, the days were short, but the nights made it seem longer. Now a days, when December 1 is logged, it seems like Christmas comes just a week or so later. The relativity of time changes as we age I guess. Not sure if Einstein covered this in his work.)
My main companion in crime was usually my cousin Stevie, who just lived down the block from us. He was two years younger than me, but we seemed to always decide to hang out together during our spare time. I don’t remember the actual year of this memory, but it would likely have been around the time that I might have been around ten and Stevie would have been eight. We were in the foggy mist of the whole Santa Claus thing. There were rumors that he did not exist and it was just our parents that were the real Santa Claus. We didn’t want to believe that, but more and more evidence seemed to roll in every day. The whole coming down the chimney thing was a real conundrum. Neither one of us had a chimney with a fireplace in our house. We had a furnace that burned coal in the winter. How in the heck could Santa come down that skinny chimney without getting burned up in the furnace? Now maybe he might come in the back door, but that was unlikely. Also, that winter we had snow, but not a lot as yet, and without a lot of snow, how could the reindeers move along to deliver the goods? Some of the sophisticated kids in school would gather a crowd in the schoolyard and expound on the realities of that there was no Real Santa Claus, and made fun of those that still believed. It was best to avoid these Philistines, but there was definitely a real nagging concern that they might be right.
Most days we would check the front page of the newspaper when we got home to see how many more shopping days that there were before Christmas. Then we would be sure that that we had the record player cranked up so we could get all hopped up on some Gene Autry and Bing Crosby, singing about the upcoming Big Event. When I heard Gene sing about Here Comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane, I assumed he was singing about our house. Maybe after dinner we might spend some time paging through the latest Western Auto toy catalog and dream of what we hoped might be under the tree. I was dreaming about a Mattel Fanner 50 cap gun, a gun that took a roll of caps and when you fanned the hammer, like a real TV sheriff, it would fire as fast as the caps rolled before they jammed up. There were other possible gifts, a bike, a new baseball, or glove. So much to see. I usually gave a pass to any of the ads for model trains. You needed to have a lot of room in your house or at least a basement to set up the tracks and get the train going. Our houses barely had enough room for the parents and the kids, with no basement or upstairs other than an attic, it was out of the question.
It was just at this time that we had a big surprise waiting for us. I am not clear in my memory how it all came about, but we were told that there would be a trip to see Santa at the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn. We had vague ideas about the building and what went on there, but we knew that it was a big place and every year at Christmas it was decorated and full of new cars, Fords of course, Christmas trees, elves, presents and of course Santa Claus. I don’t remember if it was at night or on a Saturday, but I believe my father took myself and my sister Margaret as well as Stevie and his younger brother Robert. My much younger sister Barbara was too little to know what was going on and might have been lost in the crowd of kids.
We lived in southwest Detroit, so Dearborn was not a long drive and it was in a short time that we arrived at the magical Ford Rotunda. Here was a large round building, that had a big FORD sign in the front and at the top of the walls, there were a couple receding walls that made it look like a big birthday cake with layers. I think it was always lit up at night. When we got inside it was packed with crowds of agitated kids all dreaming of Christmas, Santa Claus and presents and maybe some Christmas snacks as well. There was a giant Christmas tree as you came in, then there were displays of toys, very big on the dolls if I remember and much more. Christmas music played in the background as we tried to take in this whole overwhelming scene. We became absorbed by the great excitement inside, you could feel that tension immediately, It might have been from the parents trying to keep their kids in check, or from the kids who just wanted to ransack the place if they didn’t get to see Santa. It was incredible! We all stuck together as we began to explore the interior and figure out things. It was an amazing show of lights that drew your attention in every direction. There were displays of animated dolls and elves, doing things like making toys and cookies. There was also a big display like the front of a church, that had a nativity scene inside. So much to see for all of us. We noticed that there were a number of brand new cars interspersed amongst the Christmas displays. We didn’t spend a lot of time looking at them, as my father and Stevie’s father were both GM guys, so they might admire the cars, but financially or otherwise, they were not something of great interest, at least not to us.
After a little bit of walking around, we walked into Santa’s Wonderland and began to see if we could locate Santa and have a short chat with him and let him know what we wanted. Eventually we came upon the Santa HQ. There he was, way up high at the top of a long, long ramp packed with tons of kids, shoving their way up there. There was a big North Pole sign in front of it. When we saw that, we realized that seeing Santa would not be an easy task. It was not just on that ramp, as there was also a long line of people streaming along in front of the North Pole sign, all waiting to just get on that ramp to get to Valhalla. I could see that my father was not excited with the idea of waiting forever in that long line, so he had the four of us installed at the back of the line and said that he would check back every so often to see where we were in line, and would eventually meet us on the other side after we saw Santa. Margaret was wearing a large orange coat and topped off her look with a yellow tam. My father would use her outfit as his marker to see how things were going. This was going to be a very grim business for us. My sister Margaret was put in charge of my cousin Robert and Stevie and I were acting as free agents. We let Margaret and Robert go ahead of us and we began to figure out our strategy. Now Robert was firmly in the – I believe in Santa- camp, and Margaret was likely already in the pragmatic camp and just doing her duty as a charitable kid. Stevie and I were both still on the fence and had to figure out what to do if we made it up there. We talked it over for quite awhile. If there really was a Santa, we knew that this guy was only standing in for him, as the real guy was at the real North Pole, getting ready for the big day. We assumed whatever we told this helper, would be relayed to Santa and be put on his list. IF we were still on the good list and not the naughty list, which was a real possibility. Also,, there would only be time for one thing to ask for Christmas, so it would have to be something realistic and forget about all our other wishes and hope for presents. So as we talked, we didn’t notice that Margaret and Robert had become a little separated from us and there were eight kids or more that were now between us. Some of the adults in line were worse than the kids and elbowed their way up the ramp to get junior closer to Santa. We should have been paying better attention. So now we would be even more delayed from our goal. The crowd behind was even getting a little more aggressive, everyone wanted to hurry up and get their chance. The more that we talked, it began to seem to have an inevitable ending for us. We were tired waiting in this big line, it was getting hot in this crowd of eager, Santa Claus starved kids. Was there really a Santa? If so, what guarantee would we have that this Santa would get the right message to the Real Santa? Also, being greedy, we didn’t want to limit ourselves to just one Christmas present. We looked at each other and then looked further up the ramp and spotted Margaret and Robert slowly moving closer to the top. We then turned around and shoved our way through the milling masses of little kids who were happy to see the line move up a little more for them. When we got totally out of the lines and got into an open spot, we felt a little guilty but then relieved when we looked up at the conga line snaking up to Santa. It probably looked a little like the storming of the Bastille, but with little kids and just a tiny bit less violent. We made our way over to the Exit sign, where the survivors would be gathering after their visit with Santa. We had already rehearsed our excuse for my father and for Margaret.. We told them that we had a little bit too much pop and really had to go to the bathroom. So by the time we got back, the line was too long. We were not real disappointed and we were just happy to have this little outing into the magic Santa Wonderland of the Ford Rotunda. The place always had a special place in our memories and always planned to come back another time, whether for Christmas or even in the summer.
All in all it was a successful trip. We had fun, we didn’t commit ourselves for or against the proposition —Is there really a Santa Claus? We kept our options open and would play it by ear until Christmas Day. I don’t know if it was that year, or the year after, that I finally did get a Mattel Fanner 50 cap gun, but I knew that it came from the parents of my friend across the street. It wasn’t as great as advertised and eventually got jammed up with caps too many times, so it was relegated to use as a prop, where you had to furnish the sound of the shooting gun. The creativity of those sounds depended upon which kid was the shooter, everyone had something a little different, but that is a story for another time.
Unfortunately, we never did make it back to the magical Ford Rotunda. Then in 1962 there was a great fire, which accidentally caught the roof on fire and in a short time the whole building was destroyed. After that time, no little kids would ever again see that wonderful Santa Wonderland and everything that went with it. Kids would have to settle for going to a mall and see the rental Santas with the picture takers. We were lucky to have this once in a lifetime experience. So some things were better in the old days.
Note—The above sequence of events are mostly true, no names were changed to protect the innocent or the guilty, but getting all the facts down exactly after so many years, cannot be relied upon 100%
copyright@Bill Melnik 2024 A.D.