HE'S GONNA FIND OUT WHO'S NAUGHTY OR NICE

DECEMBER 5th, an important date in my childhood.

I don't know if this is still celebrated in Milwaukee anymore, but when I was growing up, it was just part of the Christmas season. St. Nicholas nite. All the dime stores advertised it, you could find children all over the area being very well behaved. I don't know the whole tradition of it, just what happened in our home.

On the evening of Dec. 5th, we would all hang our stockings up. We had no fireplace, so ours were thumbtacked to the window sill. Not Christmas stockings, mind you, just one of your stockings you wore on a daily basis. Ours were long (hated) white ribbed stockings. (side note: not sure how we kept them up, but pinning them to our underwear seems like a safe bet) anyhow, sometime after we were asleep, St Nick would sneak into our homes and fill our stockings. In the toe there was always a tangerine or an orange, followed by nuts (still in the shell) some Christmas hard candy, and a small toy, or maybe barettes for our hair. Then we knew we were on his "nice" list. I remember one year when my Dad had to have been very, very naughty, he found his sock (a regular man's white sock) hanging from the chandelier filled with COAL, the real stuff like we had in the basement.

Then back to the North Pole lickety-split to get all the toys and reindeer ready for Christmas.

Now begins the nightly radio shows (15 minutes each) starting with Billie the Brownie from Schusters (local dept. store) led by Captain Larry. Santa also had Metik the eskimo who took care of his reindeer. He kind of looked like the guy in Dawn's photo of Snow, Las Vegas style. No, not Chip, the other photo. Following that was The Gimbie and Ellie show sponsored by Gimbels dept store. Ending with Santa's big night of leaving the North Pole and visiting all the good boys and girls.

HAPPY ST. NICHOLAS DAY