In celebration of Christmas and Hanukkah, I’m presenting the tale of this heartwarming event from my past, the days when I was a musician, traveling throughout the Midwest as part of a troupe of magicians and clowns presenting 90-minute Christmas magic shows twice daily to benefit charitable organizations. I was the musical director and doubled as Chian, Mysterious Prince of the Orient. Two of the performers were Ben Rickman and his partner, Dan, the fat and skinny members of a clown team from New York. Because Ben possessed the necessary corpulence, he arranged with Hugh, the show promoter, to portray St. Nick, or, Santa Klausky as he preferred to be called, for a few extra dollars. Hugh provided a brand new, $400 red-crushed-velvet Santa suit.
Traverse City, Mich. marked the end of our tour. Prior to each show, Ben would circulate through the audience, mingle with the small fry, and garner Christmas wishes. In Santa attire, he delighted in emphasizing his mild Yiddish accent while performing sleight-of-hand. During the show he and Dan did their clowning. At the show’s finale, Ben would reappear as Santa to hand out small gifts as the kiddies exited.
At Ben’s final appearance, he’d emerge at center stage when the curtains parted, in the midst of a small snowstorm, produced by his homemade snow gun: A short blackpipe loaded with an explosive charge and packed with white confetti. When Ben fired it overhead, it looked like snowfall.
Hugh had warned us the Traverse City kids were unruly, wild….blood-thirsty. And, I was without my wolfsbane, or holy water.
Pre-show, Santa Klausky squeezed through the rows of the auditorium seats as children clawed at his beard and red jacket. Nearing the end of the row, close to where I played background music on the organ, one rampageous little girl kept jumping and grabbing at the hair on the back of his head.
He finally wheeled around and, in a pleasant tone with a sugary smile asked, “What’s your name, little girl?”
“Joanne!” she screamed.
“Joanne, you little shmegegge, how would you like Santa Claus to beat the s— out of you already, hmmmm?”
She slowly melted down into her seat.
The patience-trying, afternoon show neared its finale, the awe-inspiring appearance of that Great Gnome from the North. Ben stood backstage next to me in my Chinese get-up, cursing the maniacal children out front, all the while stuffing gunpowder into his snowstorm cannon.
“I should give them something they won’t forget. I should blow the whole bunch of them into August with this thing.” Ben stuffed in more powder, packed the pipe solid with white confetti, and walked to the center of the stage. He held the pipe in front of him at the ready and waited for the curtains to part.
When the M.C. strode across the stage, straining to hear jingling sleigh bells, his efforts were abruptly ended by a deafening, thunderous, explosion. The front curtains ballooned outward, then belched a great cloud of white smoke and confetti on to the front rows. On cue, a stagehand pulled on the rope that slowly parted the curtains. The gradually clearing smoke revealed a hazy, blackened, something that resembled a large, fuzzy lump of charcoal. The smoke dissipated and I could see that the fuzzy charcoal was Ben. He looked like a fat Wile E. Coyote whose latest scheme to catch the roadrunner had gone horribly wrong. His hat and eyebrows were gone. What remained of his Santa beard smoldered and stood out straight at right angles to each side of his head. The bright red Santa jacket was mostly a memory, except for the cuffs and some shreds around his waist, which hung down over the wide black belt. In front of his smoking chest hairs, he held the charred remnants of the trigger portion of his snow gun, the rest of it apparently vaporized. Burned confetti drifted slowly down on him from somewhere up in the curtains.
Ben cautiously began to move. His head went slowly downward as he surveyed the damage. When he saw that his chest hairs were still glowing, he dropped the trigger and frantically beat out the embers on his front.
“Close the curtains!” the M.C. yelled, while waving his arms.
I’d lost my Chinese hat and my contact lenses in the explosion. Pushing the awestruck stagehand out of the way, I grabbed the rope and closed the curtains as fast as I could.
The M.C. asked Ben, “Are you all right?”
“You should be so all right,” Ben sighed.
“What happened?”
“The meshuggena snow gun blew up!”
The crowd out in front, dead silent since the big boom, began to murmur back to life. They started to applaud and cheer. Hugh burst through the curtains, took one look at Ben, and stepped back.
“My God! Are you okay?”
In the instant before Ben could reply, reality apparently struck Hugh.
Tears welled up in his eyes.
“My suit…my $400 Santa suit.” He turned to me with a glazed expression. “Did you know this suit wasn’t even two weeks old yet?”
Out front, the children screamed, “Yea-ay, Santa! More! More!”
Ben, still smoking, turned and painfully walked toward his dressing room. Hugh followed, shaking his head, saying to no one in particular, “I picked the fabric out myself…my…my suit…”
Over his shoulder Ben called, “Enough. Tell those kids Santa went plotz.”
Contrary to what his appearance suggested, Ben suffered only minor burns, the loss of his eyebrows and some non-essential body hair. The last I saw of him was at the bus station as he and Dan boarded to head back East.
How ironically prophetic Ben was when he said with a grumble that he’d give those Traverse City kids something they would never forget. Maybe I should call Michigan to make sure they haven’t forgotten.