There are a few things that are more-or-less given at the holiday season. One is that you will get socks and underwear from your grandparents (if you are lucky enough to still have them around to give you gifts), another is that someone is bound to wax nostalgic for the movie A Christmas Story, and the third is that every theater guild and television station will insist on trotting out Dickens in one or more of its incarnations.
To that inevitable list, I wish to add the perennial return of The Bergquist Christmas Eve Story.
This story has been with me for a long time. It first took shape back in 1985, when I was a traffic clerk processing commercial copy at WFTS by day and a stand-up comic by night, performing for drinks at the local bar across from the station. Back then, I used to tell the crowd I was making "six-thousand a year and all the food stamps I could lick." While the income may have been slightly higher and the food stamps were purely metaphorical, the desperation of a young comic was very real.
Over the last forty years, the story has evolved. I have refined the dialogue, updated the legal understanding of my six-year-old self, and polished the rougher edges of the pacing. But at its heart, this is the tale you would have heard on that Christmas Eve in Tampa, 1985—a bare, unvarnished recounting of exactly what happened on Christmas Eve in the Village Green section of Miami in 1969. Plain, simple, and utterly true.
Sort of...
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The Bergquist Christmas Eve Story
By Don Bergquist
It's Christmas Eve, 1969; the place is Miami, Florida. Outside, the Village Green section of the city is brightly festooned in red and green, but in the kitchen of the little green and white house on 122nd Avenue Southwest, the scene is far more noir. The time is shortly before nine in the evening (I guess—I’m only six and still can't tell time) and the reason we are here is to witness the aftermath of a crime. The Bergquist children are in a lot of trouble.
Again...
The entire Bergquist brood; my sister, Mary, my brothers, Denis and Chip, and I are all lined up against the kitchen wall. We're a police line-up in miniature. Dad is doing his best Columbo impersonation as he strides back and forth before us. It seems that my parents have just discovered the crime.
Someone has carved two small (practically invisible, really) notches etched into the top drawer of one of the cabinets. Mom is off in another room somewhere. Wherever she has gone, we can still hear her ranting. She is "so mad she could spit tacks," as she says. (Something all of us would love to see if she can really do... but none of us ever has had the nerve to ask her to demonstrate.) She cannot believe that she gave birth to someone who could be so dastardly. (Though these are not the exact words she is using, it more-or-less conveys her intent. I've cleaned it up a bit because this is a family story!)
Dad stops his pacing mid-stride. He doesn’t have the rumpled trench coat—that being a bit heavy for the Miami humidity—and his cigar is currently unlit, but he has the squint down to a science. He leans in as if he’s about to ask about an alibi.
"Now, here, you see," he says, holding one of his carving knives. It really is dramatic how he brandishes the knife at us—the heavy one usually reserved for the holiday roast. "And over here," he says, slamming the knife onto the counter right above the drawer with an overly dramatic flourish, "you see the gouges in the kitchen drawer!"
Dad displays the evidence as he explains it to us and then looks at us expectantly. His intention is clear. But that doesn't stop him from stating the obvious. "One of you has hacked at the drawer with this knife. I will find out who did this. One of you will admit to it or one of you will tell me who did it!"
We've all seen the TV show. We know he is waiting for one of us to crack, but we just stand there looking at him. Well... Mary, Denis, and I look at him. Chip just kind of fidgets. I'm not sure that he has made the connection between our current predicament and the Detective Columbo we watch each week.
Now, about this time, I expect that you are saying to yourself "But, Don..." which is strange, unless your name happens to be "Don" and you are in the habit of talking to yourself, but I digress…
You're probably asking yourself, "Don't your parents see your name written all over this one? Given your established reputation for mischief, shouldn't they know to place you at the top of the list of suspects? Have I asked enough rhetorical questions for you to resume the narrative yet?"
To which I say this: "You sure ask a lot of dumb questions! Whose story is this anyway? Would ya let me tell it?"
No, but seriously! You raise perfectly good and valid points. They should suspect me! They should just naturally assume their troubled middle son was the primary person of interest. But no! My parents are idiots! My siblings and I cannot believe how incredibly, excruciatingly, unbelievably, mind-numbingly dim our parents actually are! We keep fearing that the men from the government will one day arrive at our door and inform our parents that they are just to nit-witted to have children and we will never see them again! But that is another story. Back to the kitchen.
So here we are, all cool as cucumbers (you know; the little kind that they make sweet pickles out of—gherkins, I think they're called) standing against the kitchen wall and none of us willing to speak up and claim responsibility. Dad is livid. "Okay, then" he decrees "we'll just let you sit here and think about it. When one of you wants to tell us what happened, your mother and I will be in the living room."
The idea here, you see, is to let us think about the ways that they might punish us and have us turn against each other so that the guilty party would turn themselves in. It is a sort of mental manipulation that one day the yet-to-be-created Homeland Security Administration will call "enhanced interrogation." But on the eve of the seventies, this is still called "child-rearing."
Dad's plan is devious enough for me to appreciate, but not good enough to trap me (uh, I mean to trap the guilty party whoever that might be). And so, we sit there.
…and sit there…
…and sit there…
…and sit there…
My thoughts are on Santa Claus. I know that he is on his way toward South Florida and that he will not be stopping at our house if the Bergquist children are still in the kitchen when he makes it to Miami! I have to think of some way to get us out of the kitchen so that we can all enjoy Christmas. It is a noble and selfless act, if I must say so myself.
"Look," I say to Chip, eyeing my elder siblings conspicuously and lowering my voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper, "Chip, we've got to get out of this kitchen before Santa makes it to Village Green or there will be no Christmas here. Now, I would go out there now and tell Mom and Dad that I did it, just to get us out of the kitchen you understand, but you see the laws in the state of Florida say that any kid over the age of six can be legally killed by their parents for acting this bad."
I look to my elder siblings for support. Not a word of back-up!
"Now, whichever of them," I continue jerking my thumb at Mary and Denis, "did this horrible thing to Dad's kitchen is in for it! They're old enough that they are goners for sure! You don't want Mom and Dad to kill whichever one of them did this, now do you?"
"As I said, I'd tell them that I did this, but I can be legally killed." I say again. "Now, who do we know who is under six years old who could save Mary or Denis...?"
"I'm three and a quarter." Chip says proudly.
"That's right! You are only three..."
"Three and a quarter!" Chip corrects indignantly.
"You're three and a quarter," I amend. "So you're too young to be killed and since you're the youngest and the cutest they would let you get away with anything. You could tell them you did it and save Mary or Denis... whichever of them has done this horrible thing!"
It is a lovely plan! I am really proud of it. I am still basking in the glow of my own genius when, only seconds after Chip left the kitchen, Dad comes back with Chip in tow. He explains exactly how unlikely it is that Chip is actually guilty. He is way too short to reach the knives. He isn’t able to reach the drawer. And he can produce no reason he would want to do what he has claimed to have done. No, Dad, for all his lack of mental capacity, had seen right through my beautiful plan. Chip is allowed to leave the kitchen and the time passes.
And I'll tell you: coming up with a Plan B isn’t easy. Not with the minuscule half-life of my Plan A, the prospect of Santa bypassing our house, and the sight of Chip dancing past the kitchen door—undoubtedly fueled by one of Grandmother's Swedish Spritz cookies—mocking us with a "Ninny-nanny-boo-boo!"
I needed a Plan B, and I needed it now. If for no other reason than to get out of that kitchen and thump my brother for so effectively spoiling my first attempt at freedom.
I looked at my siblings. I looked at the drawer. I looked at the dog. Nothing. I looked at the clock—I still couldn't read the numbers, but I could see Christmas Eve ticking away. I knew that with every second that passed, Santa was getting closer to Miami, and our chances were getting slimmer. And then, I had it. It was simple. It was elegant. It was air-tight.
What was Plan B? It was the magnum opus of my six-year career as a world-class troublemaker. It was a performance worthy of an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, or whatever gilded statue you’d care to hand me. I was brilliant!
I cried.
I didn't just weep; I flopped apoplectic against the kitchen wall. I launched a full-blown, Class-A, five-alarm tantrum. I screamed until my face was as red as a Christmas ornament. I pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at a spot on the wall midway between my elder siblings and shrieked that whichever of them had done this horrible thing should just admit it!
"Midnight Mass is coming!" I wailed. It was my favorite service of the year, and I made it sound like my very soul was at stake. "If we don't get out of this kitchen, we’re going to miss it—and it will be all their fault!"
Miraculously (and who says that there are no miracles anymore... it is Christmas Eve after all), I was right. It was getting late. Mom and Dad came into the kitchen, herded us each of us off in-turn to the bath, and scrubbed the evidence of my performance off my face. Within the hour, we were stuffed into our Christmas Eve finery—the little group of angels that we (presumably) are—and marched off to church.
The incident was never mentioned again. Santa did, in fact, stop at the Bergquist household that night, and all was, if not actually forgotten or forgiven, at least buried beneath the wrapping paper and the Swedish Spritz cookies, never to be discussed in polite company again.
And I want to go on the record one last time. I didn't admit to it then, and I haven't admitted to it now. I just can't imagine who did, or even could do, such a horrible thing to a kitchen drawer.
Not on Christmas Eve, at least!
Wherever you are today, I wish you a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday of your choice.
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