Christmas in July

Steve is a Union Pacific train engineer living in Marfa. He both looks and acts a lot like Santa Claus, minus the seasonally determined relevance.

Steve is hard to miss. He's downright chatty. The kind of guy who hugs you after you sneeze: ebullient incarnate. His white beard is quick to tremble with laughter, the unkempt hairs all the jollier against red apple cheeks. His tall lace-up boots are usually covered in what appears to be soot. His whole comportment suggests a person completely satisfied with a predestined occupation.

In fact it’s Steve’s undying love for his job that puts him in Santa territory, more so than his twinkling blue eyes, button nose and rotund figure, though those don’t hurt the picture.

My casting is not totally original here. Steve usually plays Santa at the Chamber of Commerce’s annual tree lighting / lap sitting affair.  I’m surprised when he mentions with casual bitterness that his own children hate him. I suspect coal was involved, though I don’t pry.

Steve said he drove a train for the first time in grade school. He pestered a conductor stopped in town and convinced him to let a 10-year-old pilot the freighter as far as the city limits.

“From that point on,” Steve said, “I knew exactly what I wanted to do in life”. And he never wavered. 

Steve petitioned the railroad at age 17 to let him come on as a rail switcher, even though the requisite age was 18. (This was before they had automated switches to control the tracks).

“What is that like?” I wondered, “To know at age 10 exactly what you wanted to be when you grew up and never change your mind?”

I wanted to be either Kristi Yamaguchi or Madame President at that point, hopefully both. Unfortunately neither my flexibility nor resolve was anything to write home about.

But here’s Steve, living the dream.