MONONGAH – It’s not every Yule that Santa ends up on his own “naughty” list, but that’s what happened overnight Thursday in Monongah.
Don’t judge the Big Guy too harshly, though.
Because it was Mother Nature who got him into all this.
Gusting winds tore through the town in outlying Marion County causing – wait. Let Mayor JohnBoy Palmer tell it.
“Oh, yeah, I know exactly what it looks like,” he said, trying not to laugh. “And I can promise you we’re getting it corrected.”
Yep. The wind.
It whooshed through with such a clatter that it loosened the supports and brackets that were holding a 50-pound holiday depiction of Mr. Kringle at the top of a utility pole along Pike Street, Monongah’s main drag.
Sure, Santa has been known to happily dance around the North Pole after the final toy run on Christmas Eve.
However, the way this particular decoration slid down, was the thing.
And the particular angle at which the seasonal adornment was resting when said slide stopped … well … made it look like pole-dancing of a decidedly different kind was commencing.
“When I got up and checked my phone this morning, I had a lot of messages,” Palmer said. “I think the first one came in around 2 a.m.”
Not that anyone was offended, he said.
In fact, people were emitting guffaws and ho-hos at rates that would have put the actual Santa himself to shame.
“It was like, ‘Hey, Mr. Mayor, exactly want kind of decorations are you putting up this year?’” Palmer said. “Little jibes like that.”
The mayor was so moved he navigated his four-wheeled sleigh down Pike to see for himself.
“Please know that this was not intentional,” he said, in a post clacked out for the town’s Facebook page.
Like the voicemail dispatches, though, residents who offered their reviews online were also highly entertained by the jingle-physics of it all.
“Looks like too much eggnog,” replied one.
“Classic,” said another.
“He’s gotta pay the elves somehow,” one citizen offered.
“Just leave it alone,” came the proclamation of still yet another. “In this crazy world, we all need a good laugh!!”
Of the latter, Palmer profoundly agrees.
Just say it was going to happen, the mayor offered with a proclamation of his own because hey, he said: it is Monongah – quirks, family and friends who might as well be family, and all.
“Family,” of course, being the watch-word here, he said.
Childhood buddies tagged him with his “JohnBoy” (no space) nickname, in fact.
“That’s how people know me,” he said.
He’s a lifelong resident. He has lifelong pals on town council, including his dad, John. His mom, Teresa, serves as the town’s recorder.
And his friends at Rogers Electric were going to make the necessary repairs to get Santa again shining bright, again from the top of that fixture on Pike Street – and just in time for Monongah’s Christmas Parade, scheduled to step off Friday evening.
“I mean, it is funny,” the mayor said. “What else can you do but laugh?”
