ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995              TAG: 9512270106
SECTION: CURRENT                  PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
                                             TYPE: CHRISTMAS MEMORIES 
SOURCE: DENISE TURNER 

SANTA COULDN'T COME

Dec. 23, 1974. My husband, Rob, was between graduate schools and had just gotten a job working for the telephone company after looking for work for several months.

I was seven months pregnant with our second son. As one dear friend phrased it, we were "poorer than dirt."

We had been in our "new" apartment about a month. I still like to impress my grown children by describing that early home. There was one source of heat, a furnace in the dining room with a hole in the side big enough for our toddler, Robby, to stick his hand in all the way to the flame. The bathroom had no sink, it was in the kitchen, along with the kitchen sink.

Still, we weren't miserable. We didn't expect too much from this particular Christmas and we were grateful for the new job and the hope of the new baby. Robby was too young to care what he got for Christmas, and we knew our parents would come through with something for him. As for gifts for them, everything that year was homemade (and looked it).

Indeed, I thought things were going fairly well as I mixed the frosting for the cake for that night's Christmas party at church. That's when Dorey started barking.

Our dog, Dorey, owned the little feet that first pattered across our floors. She was good company and fortunately, didn't eat much. Dorey's mission in life, as she understood it, was to let us know whenever someone came to the door. I couldn't take her too seriously, however, because our apartment was actually part of a duplex and she hadn't figured out that not all people on the porch wanted to see us.

Just to make sure, I opened the door and looked out. There was a box on the porch, but no one was there, so I closed the door again and went back to the frosting.

Dorey kept up the barking for several more minutes, insisting that I needed to go back to the door. Such an interruption wasn't really appreciated. Robby was taking a nap, which was my window of opportunity to bake without help.

Back to the door I went. I opened it this time to find several more boxes and this times the person responsible for them. "Can I help you?" I asked, hoping that he would solve the mystery that was now making me quite curious.

"Are you Mrs. Turner?"

"Yes."

"Then these are for you. Santa couldn't come, so he asked me to deliver these for him. Can I bring these inside?"

Could I think of anything intelligent to say? Of course not. I just let him in. I must have thanked him, and the Santa that sent him. Then he brought in those boxes and several more that had been in a truck.

When he was gone I somehow managed to pick my jaw back up and took inventory in the living room. The boxes were mostly cases of canned goods: vegetables, fruit, tuna, beef stew and chili beans. In addition there was a case of peanut butter, a canned ham, detergent, a little fuzzy, warm jacket for Robby and a box of chocolates wrapped with a pretty red and white checkered ribbon.

When Rob came home for lunch, he found me sitting in the middle of this land of plenty, crying. By the time I was able to explain what had happened, as far as I could figure it out, he had tears in his eyes, too.

For weeks we tried guessing who could have provided us with this precious windfall. It wasn't our parents and none of our friends had that much money. We considered a kind professor Rob had worked with in graduate school, but the mystery was just as perplexing as before.

All I know is that when our heads stopped spinning, we gave a prayer of thanks for our anonymous Santa and asked for blessings for him or her.

Then we thought of the Wheatleys, who had a toddler, no insurance, and were working their way through graduate school.

We called up Darwin, a friend who didn't know the Wheatleys, and then we drove to their house. Sitting in the car across the street in the dark, we watched as Darwin went up to their basement apartment with a couple of boxes of canned food and told them, "Santa couldn't come, so he asked me to deliver these."

We still don't know who our Santa was that year, but it doesn't matter. He or she gave us a lot more than food and a fuzzy jacket.

And every year when I pull out the Christmas decorations and place bows made of red and white checkered ribbon on the tree, I remember what that gift was.

Denise Turner lives in Radford.

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