Traveler
Steven Reis
December 24, 2023
It’s been many years that I’ve been penning these stories to be read on Christmas morning. It began at the direction of my dear mother-in-law, Zelma Dearmond.
It had been the tradition in the Dearmond household to celebrate Christmas with songs, food, and festivity on Christmas Eve in her large living room.
As her family grew and grandchildren were added to the occasion, she decided they should provide entertainment in the manner of a talent show. Without being too expectant, she anticipated that at least some of the adults should participate as well.
She knew that I enjoyed writing and, as a result, I began in those times writing a story to be read during our Christmas celebration. It became a tradition and it has continued in my family in the years after Zelma’s passing.
We live in that same house that once belonged to Donna’s parents. Over the years, I’ve often read my newly-penned Christmas story to my children, then to my grandchildren, and now I offer it to my friends as a Christmas present.
In keeping with my journalistic proclivity to procrastinate, I make it a challenge to always wait until Christmas Eve to write the story which is to be read aloud only a few hours later. It doesn’t get rewritten and, unfortunately, it also doesn’t get much in the way of proper editing.
It’s always in a raw form, but it’s always from the heart. Thanks, Zelma, for setting me on this path - you were a wonderful and loved mother-in-law... even if you DID introduce me only as Donna’s “friend” (even after we were married!).
“Hey! Now, that’s a great looking sweatshirt!”
It was the voice of a man across the parking lot from us.
We had just walked out of a truck stop carrying a paper sack filled with burgers made from what may have once been actual beef. I was wearing a bright green, red, and white hoodie with Jim Carrey’s version of the Grinch broadly displayed across my torso.
The truck stop lot was populated by people moving hurriedly into and out of the glass doors. The air was chilly and filled with the sharply sweet odor of gasoline and diesel exhaust.
He was sitting on the tailgate of an older model Ford pickup truck. Two young huskies pulled against one another. They were tied to the hitch on the back of the truck.
We walked in his direction as another man walked away from him - apparently relieved to have the opportunity to get away from the unkempt traveler.
“What’s your name?” he asked me with a broad grin.
I considered just smiling and moving on. That’s what most of us typically do when we are confronted by unwanted but anticipated solicitation.
It’s the Christmas season. Everyone wants something.
“Steve,” I blurted, without thinking. Sometimes we’re just too polite for our own good.
“Steve,” he repeated.
“Have you been naughty or nice this year, Steve?” he asked.
I paused.
For one thing, I thought it was a weird question to ask someone you’ve only just met - even if they ARE wearing a Grinch hoodie. For another, I wasn’t sure how to answer the question. Strangely, I thought I should try to answer it honestly - even though I didn’t know this fellow.
I immediately thought about a letter to Santa Claus I’d just read. It had been printed in one of our local newspapers during the past week. The letter had been written by a young third grader who was being candidly honest to the mythical old elf - she told him that she had been both bad and good during the past year.
“Naughty AND nice, I guess,” I said aloud.
“Naughty and nice,” he repeated, “Hmmph. Okay.”
At that point, I saw he had a battery-operated Dremel-type tool in his right hand. He looked down and seemed to be using it to clean the fingernails of his left hand as he continued speaking to us.
I say “us” when in reality, Donna was just standing silently by my side holding the bag of cooling burgers and soon-to-be-stale fries. The two dogs were inquiring with their snouts to find out what was in the bag and whether they were going to get treats.
“Nice looking dogs,” I said as the two young animals wound their harnesses around both my legs in their exuberance and hopeful anticipation.
“Yeah,” said the thin, scruffy young man as he continued to sit cross-legged on the tailgate with the buzzing instrument in his right hand.
He looked up at me.
“They were born on my sailboat in Key West,” he said. “They were the only two in the litter who lived; the smaller one is the runt.”
I reached down and patted the dogs, trying unsuccessfully to step carefully out of the looping nylon strap that now encircled both my legs.
“Don’t trip,” said Donna helpfully. She tried to hold one of the dogs back as it seemingly wanted to snug the strap more tightly around my calves and knees. She wasn’t successful in holding them back; so I remained carefully in one place.
“I’m traveling,” the dog owner continued as he looked back down at his hands and the instrument he was carefully pushing against his fingers. He seemed to be holding something but I couldn’t see from where I stood wrapped by the excited puppies.
He told me the dogs were two years old when I asked about them.
“Are you from Texas?” I asked - wondering what he would otherwise be doing in this out-of-the-way truck stop in rural Texas off I-45.
“Nah,” he answered, “I’m originally New Mexican. But now I just travel.”
He told me he had a nephew he was going to visit in North Central Texas. The child had been sick, he said, but was getting better. He was going to go see him for Christmas as he continued traveling around the country.
“I’m just more comfortable in truck stops that anywhere else,” he said. “Thought I’d stop here for a while before I travel on.”
I felt I was being set up for a tear-jerker solicitation but I wasn’t paying close attention since I was worried I might not break free from the huskies who were finding playful joy in spinning me in circles.
The battered hat he wore was pinned on the right side with an Air Force officer’s hat insignia. The large silver device was being used to give his battered green hat an Australian bush appearance. I intended to ask whether he had served; but he continued talking.
“I do Jack Sparrow,” he said as he looked up at me from the activity in his hands.
“Excuse me?” I said - not sure what we were talking about.
“Jack Sparrow,” he said. “I do Jack Sparrow impressions in Las Vegas when I go out there to gamble. I like to play poker,” he finished
“Really?” I asked. Not sure what else to say at that point.
“Yeah, I usually have the beads in my whiskers, but they’re shaved short right now,” he said as he touched the scruffy whiskers on his chin.
“You know, he’s going to make another movie,” he said.
“I didn’t know that,” I responded, continuing the polite conversation but concerned about whether our lunch was going to get too cold or perhaps taken from Donna by my canine captors.
“Yeah, I think Johnny Depp has me to thank for that,” he said, seemingly pretty proud of himself.
I didn’t ask how this could be; but my lack of inquiry didn’t deter him from telling me about his belief.
“I was in Vegas and I was paying poker with some guy that I think was a producer or something. I was dressed up like Jack Sparrow and I told him that Depp is the only reason that the franchise is successful. I think he might have been a producer for Disney or something. The next thing I know, I hear Disney is going to make another movie and Johnny Depp is going to be Sparrow again.”
He was rambling on without prompting from me.
“I think I did that. I’m going to take credit for it, anyway,” he concluded as he turned back to look down at his hands.
The buzzing stopped and he set the Dremel tool to the side on the bed of truck. He picked up a pair of needle-nosed pliers and some wire and began twisting the wire around something in his left hand.
I turned and tried to look into the cab of the old Ford to see if anyone else was in the truck with him.
“Do you travel with anyone else besides the dogs,” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “my bird. She’s a rose-ringed parakeet but it’s too cold out here for her - I leave her in the truck on days like this.”
I couldn’t see the bird from where I was wrapped near the tailgate. Donna stepped to the side and was peering into the cab as he continued talking.
“They can live in temperatures down to 20 degrees in the wild... but this isn’t really the wild....”
I thought about that as he said it.
It doesn’t make any more sense to me now than it did then. I guess he was running out of things to say and was just rambling.
He held out his right hand, looked me in the eye and asked, “what’s your wife’s name?”
By this point, we’d been talking to him for several minutes.
A number of people had walked past and seemed to be mildly interested in the conversation between this vagabond-looking man seated in his dirty pickup truck speaking to a silver-haired guy in a Grinch hoodie.
But though they paused for a moment, they all moved along - probably grateful that they weren’t being asked whether THEY had been naughty or nice.
I decided we needed to get back on the road. And by now I felt I was going to be caught in a similar situation to one I’d been in when I was only 10 years old - interestingly enough, it was in New Mexico where this traveler was from.
My parents had taken me and my siblings on a trip across the US and we stopped in New Mexico.
I saw an older man that I came to find out was a member of a Navajo tribe.
With a grizzled and wrinkled look on his face, he asked me if I wanted to take his picture.
Well, of course I did! I had my old Argus box camera with me.
I flipped up the metal screen protector on top of the camera, looked down onto the glass view finder and anxiously snapped his picture.
He then held out his hand and told me that I owed him a dollar.
I was stunned.
For one thing, I didn’t know I was going to have to pay to take the picture of that old man.
For another, a dollar was about all the money I had in the world at that time.
In shock, I reached into my right pocket and gave that old Navajo the largest part of my life’s savings.
He walked away.
I waited and then I walked away.
That day, I paid for a pretty valuable lesson.
You’d have thought I’d have learned from it. Apparently I hadn’t as I took the proffered item from the new New Mexican seated in the back of his pickup.
I was trapped. I knew it.
I didn’t even look at what he handed me.
Whatever it was, he intended to make another for Donna - that’s why he’d asked her name.
“We really need to be getting back on the road,” I said, determined not to fall further into perceived indebtedness, “how much do I owe you for this?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing, really,” he said, gently. “I’m just trying to make a little money for Christmas presents.”
He had already begun settling back onto the tailgate in a relaxed manner.
I pulled out a $5 bill and handed it to him, wishing him a Merry Christmas and safe travels.
“You too, naughty and nice Steve,” he said with a smile.
I unwrapped myself from the dogs and we moved across the parking lot to our waiting truck. As I glanced back, I could see his parakeet sitting on the dashboard of his well-lived-in pickup truck eating an apple.
And as I looked back at the traveler, I could see that a woman had just stopped to admire his dogs.
I’m certain he asked her name and how she’d been during the past year.
As we got into the truck to drive on, I glanced at the small item he’d handed me.
It was a penny. Lincoln had been painted to look like Santa Claus.
It was bound in wire so it could be worn as a pendant or on a keychain. And, on the back, he had inscribed, “Naughty & Nice Steve.”
I smiled to myself as I read it. I smile now as I write.
Thinking about it, I hope that, on balance, I’ve been more nice than naughty along this journey.
And I hope the same for you.
Merry Christmas.
