The studio headphones were gently protecting my mind from the cold morning air outside and from the cold realities of sounds that might distract me from the work at hand. Through them were flowing the calming sound of broadcast partner and boss Bob’s voice as he told many people across Wisconsin’s rural countryside that the cold December morning again included no snow in the day’s weather forecast.
His secret was ours within the filtered sound of my headphones and those hearty thousands who rise so early – some to work at everything from morning farm chores to driving a truck; some to sit with their morning cup of coffee; some to hear a broadcast legend and his writer-turned-broadcaster sidekick do their morning radio schtick. And somewhere, I knew that morning, could be a young farm boy listening to his family’s barn radio and praying Bob’s take on the weather forecast was wrong.
That boy, I knew, was hoping for a bunch of snow to fall that day and others between then and Christmas Eve.
“Some people are talking about the possibility of an open winter – no snow – but we have plenty of time,” I heard through my headphones. “It’s not like it’s been terribly cold yet.”
We chatted a little more about the still-uncovered soil and the importance of there being snow-cover to protect farms’ alfalfa and all sorts of other plants when winter’s coldest days settle into our land’s bones.
Secretly, my mind drifted to that little boy listening to us; I drifted back many years.
I heard Bob’s voice in my headphones, him introducing a song before I was to breathe some of the day’s news into my microphone.
“It’s that time of the year: The big guy will be visiting soon,” I heard him saying in my headphones as the music started.
“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why.”
There was a little farm boy on a cold December night – that boy’s young heart and spirit excited about the chance of working in the family’s dairy barn. It was the work the adults and older siblings were doing, and he couldn’t wait to be doing all of it, no matter whether that excitement would last into future years.
“Santa Claus is coming to town.”
The boy was listening to the barn radio playing the song, that one spilling early morning holiday joy into my headphones. And, he stood there in the old Veefkind dairy barn to stare out at the sky and wonder how there could be no snow so deep into December.
“He’s making a list, he’s checking it twice, he’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.”
The old wood on the barn door the boy leaned his shoulder against had been worn smooth by many years of touch by cattle, humans and weather. The boy, deep in thought, scraped a fingernail along the many pointed nails someone in his family had clenched to hold the diagonal boards in place.
“Santa Claus is coming to town.”
He stared across the darkened farmyard, his eyes through the dull yardlight focusing on the roof of the old farmhouse. That house and its roof had known many Christmases since the boy’s great-great grandfather built it during the mid-1800s; it was about to know another.
“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.”
The roof stood bare. The boy was sure that wasn’t a good thing; his father certainly wouldn’t be happy with anyone parking a sleigh and reindeer on the roof, the same way his father voiced unhappiness when the boy would throw his baseball onto the roof in a one-boy game of catch. How would any gifts be delivered to the house?
“You better watch out, you better not cry, you’d better not pout, I’m telling you why.”
They dejected boy’s head tilted over and joined his shoulder in the lean into that old barn door. December had brought no snow which, to him, that Christmas Eve night was of great importance.
“Santa Claus is coming to town.”
A booming voice startled the boy into the moment. It was his father, sternly demanding that if the boy was going to be in the barn it wasn’t to simply take up space – that the calves weren’t being fed by the boy leaning against the barn door and gawking into nothingness. The boy pulled his stocking cap down to cover his ears, them warmed and reddened by embarrassment that he’d been caught in daydreams about something as childish as Santa Claus, combined with a measure of anger at life demanding he work while there was serious daydreaming to be done.
“And Scott, what’s that big headline again in today’s news?”
Bob’s sure and smooth voice was coming through my studio headphones with that question, catching me unprepared because I’d been daydreaming about that cold and snowless childhood moment from so many years ago. I verbally stumbled around a bit, and started with the delivery of a news story much different than the one Bob was leading me into.
I realized my error a few words into the story, and caught and corrected myself.
Bob looked at me from across the studio and our microphones; he laughed.
“I wondered whether you were going to sleep over there, or what,” came his words through my headphones.
I reached up and adjusted my headphones to assure they were fully covering my ears, them warmed and reddened by embarrassment that I’d been caught in daydreams about something as childish as Santa Claus combined with a measure of anger at life demanding he work while there was serious daydreaming to be done.
— Scott Schultz
Rural Routes 