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Searching for Santa
It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m looking for Santa. Not the jolly elf in red pajamas, my Santa is a six-inch tall ceramic bank. He’s just like the one my mom had, the one she saved quarters in all year to have money for Christmas. Mine doesn’t have quarters. It came without the rubber stopper at the bottom, and any money I stashed there would fall out like it does from my wallet when Bath and Body Works has their 2-for-1 sale.
Birthday presents were purchased with S&H Green Stamps. We did all our grocery shopping on Wednesdays, double stamp day at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. The cashier would hand out a strip of the little green trading stamps, the number of stamps calculated based on the dollar amount of groceries purchased. I got to keep and redeem at the Green Stamp store any books where I had licked and stuck the stamps on the pages. I remember them tasting like spearmint, this may or may not be true.
I bought my Santa bank at an antique store in Jefferson, Texas, spurred on by a desire to replace each iconic artifact from my childhood. You know you’ve reached a certain age when every toy you ever owned is now “vintage” and “collectible.”
Every year in December my mom would bring out the bank, and I’d help her drop the coins into dusty paper wrappers. She’d pull out the stopper and pour out the quarters, a pile of clinking silver on the tabletop. Always…
