COLUMN: When Santa Ducted the halls, saved the day

Santa, who I understand is resting comfortably this morning, is a right jolly old elf.

And, as I my son and I discovered one Christmas years ago, he’s pretty handy, too.

Daniel was about 9 at the time. His wish list included a race car set. Santa interpreted this to mean that he wanted a “friction racer” set made by a group of German elves who go by the name of “Darda, Inc.” Santa might have had some help in this interpretation from Daniel’s mom, who thought the friction racer was a more appropriate technology for a 9-year-old, because it involved no electricity or diesel fuel. The power derived from a friction wheel on the bottom of the car. Stroke the wheel backwards several times on a hard surface, then release it onto the Darda track and away you go. So his list might have been “edited.”

It was pretty cool, though, especially the track. It was made from molded blue plastic and it included a series of turns and … a large inverted loop. The friction power of the Darda cars was really quite powerful, relative to the car’s diminutive size, and they really could gain enough centrifugal force to master the gravity-defying loop, provided the loop was set up just so. The cars were also powerful enough, we quickly discovered, to take part of the loop and then become airborne and sail across the room. No windows were ever broken, but that was just luck.

Santa, being the kind of guy he is, thought Daniel’s Christmas morning experience would be enhanced if he awoke to find the Darda track and loop already assembled. This did not seem like much of a problem to Santa, seeing as how the track was just plastic and wasn’t much over 10 or 12 feet long, loop included. The packaging, perhaps translated from the original elfin German, promised “assembly with ease,” and “tools are not a requirement.” What, Santa wondered, while munching on the oatmeal cookie we had left him, could possibly go wrong?

Santa had this one pegged almost right. The clever Teutonic elves had engineered an all-plastic system in which the various pieces of the track simply snapped together on the bottom.

Snap, snap, snap. Santa had the straight away completed in no time. Snap, snap …. Snap. Curves followed. Then more straight away, then some additional curves.

Finally it was all done.

Except for the loop.

The loop was perhaps 3 feet long and was made of two long, blue pieces of plastic. They were flexible enough and bent easily into the necessary shape, but getting them to stay in said shape apparently was a problem. The torque created by bending the two sections of track overwhelmed the plastic hole-and-pin system. It held, but just barely. The loop was unstable and was more an oval than the prescribed circle. As a result, several friction test drivers that Santa sent coursing down the track couldn’t pull the loop, or hit the bump where the sections joined, and plunged earthward to their doom. It was tragic, but as Santa knows, Christmas is all about sacrifice.

Bumfoozled by the balky track, Santa tried laying his finger beside his nose, the better to wield a little Christmas magic. But what worked for the lifting of jelly-bellied old elves up chimneys did not work on the race track.

With several billion more stops left to make, Santa gave up on that and grabbed his tool box. Rustling through the contents, he found just what he was looking for: a roll of magic duct tape. Yes, all duct tape is magic, but this roll was especially magical, or so it seemed to Santa that night: the width of the duct tape was an almost-perfect match for the width of the track. Snapping the track together, and getting some help from an elfin assistant he’d brought long just in case something like this happened, Santa carefully placed a long strip of duct tape along the back of the loop. He released, reconnected it to the track and … it held! A fearful test driver was released and zoomed around the track and through the loop.

Success!

“Well, Duct the Halls,” said Santa. The elfin assistant, who did not appreciate his sense of humor, rolled her eyes.

And with that, Santa was gone.

Fast forward 10 or 12 hours.

A father and son are in the living room, where the remnants of another absurdly gigantic Christmas are winding down. They are practicing their friction racing skills. Drivers are sailing through the loop, and sometimes beyond. The track is holding. And Daniel, a perceptive lad, has one of those questions.

“Dad,” he said.

“Yes, son.”

“Dad, how did Santa know to bring duct tape?” he said.

A pause.

“Well,” I said, “he’s probably had to fix some things before. … And besides, I expect he’s a pretty smart guy, don’t you?”

Daniel looked at the loop and the tape and nodded.

“Yeah, dad,” he said. “I guess he is.”

Regional Editor Tucker Mitchell can be reached at 843-317-7250 or by email at cmitchell@florencenews.com.