Christmas in the Oil Patch

Second Place (tie), adults' essays

J. Paul Hale |

12/18/2008 - 12/19/08

I had spent the entire first six years of my life living beside my grandparents in one of the numerous small camps that were spread throughout the oil fields of the Southwest during the 1940s and 50s.

There might be two or three families living in each camp. The big oil-processing plant on the north mesa was like a small village with eight families in one place, but ours was the only one where any kid lived so close to his grandparents.

My grandfather was a giant man in my eyes, with a large barrel chest and a little larger belly that hung slightly over his khaki work pants. He had worked in the oil fields his whole life, and by the time I was born my grandfather was a foreman on a small lease in far West Texas. My father was one of his hands, so we lived in the house next door. To me, this was just how things were supposed to be.

On December 23 of every year, our small community held its Christmas party. Oil-field workers and their families would travel from all the camps for miles around to attend the annual event that was always held at the "Community Center" — which was really nothing more than a small, one-room, unpainted stucco building. The inside was empty except for a long, high plywood counter at one side that served as a buffet table for potluck dinners, as a ballot table during elections, and as a dry bar for the workers who would gather with their wives and girlfriends to dance to 45 rpm records on Saturday nights.

The children would spend most of the evening running and playing outside, trying to catch moths that gathered around the bare bulbs hanging over each door. The women would busy themselves catching up on the news and gossip while checking the preparations for the gathering, and the men would gather around large tubs of iced beer outside and tell lies to each other about how hard they worked.

When the food was ready, and the beer ran out, everyone lined up to help themselves to large portions of barbecue brisket, ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, green-bean casseroles, yams, hot rolls, and pies and cakes of every description.

With heaping plates and cups of warm Kool-Aid, everyone sat on folding chairs, ice coolers, or on the floor and talked about the weather, the price of oil, or the upcoming holidays. When the meal was finished and the trash bags of paper plates had been hauled to someone's old pickup for disposal, Santa would arrive through the side door to distribute paper bags full of hard candies, nuts in the shell, and fresh fruits to every child and dutifully ask if they had been a good boys or girls and what they wanted for Christmas.

As I took my turn on Santa's lap that sixth year, I noticed that he had a large, jagged cut on his left hand and wondered if he had hurt himself loading presents or feeding his reindeer. I also noticed that my grandfather was missing during this visit from Santa and wondered if he had gone to attend to an errant oil well or quiet a rowdy roughneck.

The next morning — Christmas Eve morning — my sister and I woke early ready for the day to begin. We knew that tonight Santa would visit our house and leave this year's presents. We also knew that this would be a day of parents and grand-
parents cooking and taking care of last-minute details in the fields, with us kids waiting and hoping for the time to pass as quickly as possible.

Our family always opened our presents on Christmas Eve for two very good reasons. First, my grandmother, a very practical woman, insisted that we had way too much to do on Christmas Day to waste time opening presents. She would rise before dawn to finish preparing Christmas dinner for the family and friends who would gather at their home, and dinner was always served promptly at noon. Second, and more important to us, we were at the very beginning of Santa's route, so we got our presents earlier than, most other kids, and we could open them earlier.

After waiting through what seemed like the longest day of the year, we finally sat down for the evening meal. We kids either ignored the food set before us or picked at a few pieces, claiming we were full, anxious to get on with the evening's events. AT LAST my grandfather would get up from the table and proclaim he had to check the wells once more and would be back shortly to open presents.

My grandmother would load us kids into the car to go look for Santa in the clear, cold West Texas skies while mom and dad stayed to clean the dishes. We would drive around the maze of oil-field service roads, singing Christmas songs and staring intently into the sky, watching for a hint of sleighs, reindeer, and Santa. After a suitable and always unsuccessful search we gave up and returned home to find that we had just missed Santa — but discovered the treasures that he had left there for us. And we always got just about everything we had asked Santa for.

Christmas Day would start early, with my grandmother and mother finalizing the day's feast. Friends and relatives would begin to arrive by the carload, each woman hurrying into the house to help with the meal, each man finding a comfortable chair on the small concrete patio in front of the house, the kids shooed out to play with the new toys that Santa had brought the night before.

At precisely noon the meal began. Family and friends, young and old, gathered around a table holding more food than could possibly be eaten in a single day, joined hands, and listened to the blessing offered by my grandmother.

Finally eating — following two days of near fasting — left me feeling very full and very sleepy. I wandered through the crowded house and found my grandfather sitting in his big easy chair and climbed up onto his lap. He put his strong arms around me and told me to take a little nap as I lay my head against his chest. As I began to doze off, I looked down at his hard, worn hands and noticed something I hadn't seen before now — a large, jagged cut on his left hand.

My six-year-old mind suddenly grasped the significance of that cut and pieced the puzzle together. The absences from the party, checking the wells on Christmas Eve, the early presents at our house. It all made sense now and confirmed a suspicion that had been forming in my mind over the last few months. As I drifted off to sleep, I was thrilled by the new-found knowledge that yes, my grandfather really was Santa Claus.