StoryCorps 519: In the Spirit

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Michael Garofalo (MG): This time of year can get pretty crazy and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Any number of things can bring you to the brink. Maybe it’s having to travel for the holidays and deal with all that craziness, or maybe it’s the family gathering that’s waiting for you on the end of your trip that’s stressing you out. You know, a different kind of crazy. It can all leave you feeling a little cynical.

Santa Sarwinski (SS): I don’t believe in miracles and faith and hope and all that, all that other crap that, you know, a lot of people try to push down on the holidays. Uh, things just don’t work that way, not in real life.

(MG): If that’s where your head’s at this week, we’re hoping the stories in this episode might help turn things around for you.

William Lynn Weaver (WLW): We knock on the door and this old black guy comes on a cane. The house is cold, the only light he had was a candle.

Ron Cronky (RC): That was a moment where someone did just the right thing, just out of the blue. And it did mean something to me.

(MG): It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, with stories about the holidays bringing out the best in people. I’m Michael Garofalo and we’ll be back after a short break. Stay with us.

Welcome back to this holiday edition of the StoryCorps podcast. You know, we’ve been bringing you some pretty heavy conversations lately, so this week we wanted to lighten the mood a little. Now, having said that, I’m about to tell you that our first story is about disappointment, but bear with me. It’s a story about looking forward to something that doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to. Maybe a gift you were sure was gonna knock somebody’s socks off just fell flat, or maybe you had holiday plans that fell through at the last moment. But the thing about this story is that it’s told by the person who’s causing the disappointment. His name is Ron Cronky, and he’s a piano tuner. He had been doing that work for about 15 years when he came a StoryCorps recording booth to talk about this one job that he thinks about every year around this time. It happened in mid-December when Ron was called to tune a piano at a local nursing home.

RC: A group gathered around in chairs and they were all wearing their nice Christmas clothing and I thought, ”Well, how nice. You know, they have no idea that I’m going to bore them to sleep with my tuning.” And I’m kind of working along happily and I’m smiling at people, and a few of them were looking at me like, ”What in the world is he doing?” One lady was just glaring at me. Another lady was giving me sympathetic looks – her name turned out to be Rose. And then the activity director comes in and says, ”Okay, everybody. Ms. Jennifer was here and she saw that the piano man was tuning the piano, so she’ll be back in January.”

I didn’t realize they had a concert scheduled that day. About a third of the people looked highly disappointed and they were murmuring to each other, trying to tell each other what had happened. The angry lady barked at me and said, ”You know, haven’t you ever heard if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it?” And she stormed off. I had scooted over on my seat out of the view of Rose because she looked so hurt, and suddenly she touched my arm and it startled me, and I looked and she was very close to me. And she told me very sincerely, ”I’ve been sitting here the whole time and I’ve been watching what you do and I can tell that you’re the kind of person who would never walk away from this piano until everything was just so.”

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That was a moment where someone did just the right thing, just out of the blue. And it did mean something to me.

MG: Piano tuner Ron Cronky in Omaha, Nebraska.

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This next story is also about doing the right thing. It happened 50 years ago in a section of Knoxville, Tennessee called Mechanicsville. That’s where Dr. Lynn Weaver grew up. And in December 1967, he was just finishing his freshman year at Howard University and heading home for the holidays.

WLW: I remember walking up the street Christmas Eve and I see this kid riding down the street on their bicycle and I say, “Boy, that looks like my brother’s bike.” I get to the house and say, “Wayne, where’s your bike?” And he said, “It was down on the steps.” I said, “No it’s not. It’s gone.”

It’s a small neighborhood so we find out where the kid lives who has the bike and it’s a shack in an alley. Now, my brother and I, we’re going to beat this boy but my father was there and he said, “Just shut up and let me talk.”

So we knock on the door and this old black guy comes on a cane. The house was cold; the only light he had was a candle. It was his grandson who had stolen the bike, so he calls him out. He was the same age as my brother, about ten years old. The little boy starts crying and he says, “I just wanted something for Christmas.” So we get the bike and we leave. We go back to my house.

My father tells my mother and she doesn’t say anything. She just starts cutting the turkey in half and all the fixings. She started packing it up. My father went to the coal yard and got a big bag of coal. And then he told my brother, he said, “You’ve got another bike, don’t you?” My brother said, “Yeah…”

So we went back with food, coal – so they’d have some heat – and the bike. The little boy is just crying but the thing that moved me the most was the old man. My father gave him $20, which was a huge deal back then, and said, “Merry Christmas.” He said, “Thank you” and then just broke down in tears.

My father was a chauffeur; my mother was a domestic, so we didn’t have a lot of stuff.

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And that Christmas, I don’t even remember what gift I got but I do know that made me feel better than any Christmas I’ve ever had.

MG: That’s Dr. Lynn Weaver, and you’re gonna be hearing a lot more from him on this podcast in the new year. See – Dr. Weaver’s dad had a way of stepping up at just the right moment. Something he really needed growing up, because he was one of the first black students to integrate his high school in 1964. And you’ll hear all about that in an upcoming episode.

Okay. So at the top of the podcast I wagered that if you were feeling down on the holiday season, these stories might help turn you around. But if you’re listening out there and you remain unmoved, this last story is for you. And I’m not gonna try to win you over with sweetness here, because look, I can be a bit of a scrooge myself. But I listen to this story every holiday season, because for me it’s sort of a reminder not to take all the stress, and the way that I react to it, all that seriously.

The story first aired long before StoryCorps even existed. It was reported and produced by StoryCorps founder Dave Isay in 1990. It’s about a guy who plays Santa, one of those red suited guys who rings bells on city streets soliciting donations to charity. But this Santa has a nickname. They call him “Cynical Santa.” Here’s Dave.

Dave Isay (DI): It’s early in the morning at Santa Central, an auditorium in the headquarters of the Volunteers of America, New York’s largest supplier of Santa’s. Several dozen bedraggled looking men slowly wander in and pull their red suits off the long racks, which sit on the room’s stage. For 80 years now, Volunteers of America has been placing down on their luck Santa’s on the streets of midtown Manhattan to raise money for charity. In one corner of the room sits a thin, mustached, half-dressed Santa hunched intently over the day’s racing form. His graying hair is cut short, he’s missing a front tooth, and his face froze deeply each time he frowns, which he does a lot as he suits up for the day’s work.

SS: Extra cap, extra bow, safety pins.

DI: This is Santa Sarwinski, not your typical Kris Kringle, he prefers to be known as “Cynical Santa.” At 8:15 precisely, he’s out the door.

Speaker 6: See you later.

Speaker 7: All right, man.

SS: Maybe.

Speaker 6: See you down at [inaudible].

SS: All right.

DI: And, just a short bus ride later he’s on the job, ringing a brass bell, standing next to his red chimney donation box right smack in front of Rockefeller plaza. It’s not hard to pick out “Cynical Santa” from all of the others. He’s the one with the tobacco-stained white beard pulled down under his chin, a filter less Camel dangling from his lips.

Speaker 8: Show me some magic …

SS: I ain’t magic, I’m just me. Santa Claus is humble, that’s all. I’m not here to entertain people.

Speaker 8: Why is it not snowing?

DI: This is the seventh year that “Cynical Santa” has worked the streets of Manhattan with his distinctive style and unique Santa philosophy.

SS: I don’t believe in miracles and fate and hope and all that. Praying for things and all that other crap, that you know that a lot of people try to push down on holidays. Ah, things just don’t work that way, not in real life.

DI: Santa Sarwinski should know, he’s had his fair share of hard knocks. Ten years of living on the streets of New York, bouts with alcohol. Today he lives in a Volunteers of America residence hall and works occasionally as a welder. Except of course, during Christmas, when he’s paid $35 plus 15% of the donations in his chimney over $100 each day.

Children: Hi. Merry Christmas.

SS: Hi. Merry Christmas.

Speaker 9: No, don’t pull his beard.

DI: It’s the mornings, which are the most trying time of day for Santa Sarwinski as he’s mobbed by the thousands of eager school children unloading from buses for a tour of Rockefeller Plaza. Some shake his hand, some stare up at him gaping mouth and silent. Others talk.

Speaker 10: Hey, you’re not Santa. Anyway, Santa doesn’t smoke.

SS: Life is full of disappointments and everybody don’t live happily ever after.

Children: [singing] Bells are ringing, bells are ringing, children sing, children sing, merry merry Christmas, merry merry Christmas, happy New Year, happy New Year.

DI: Worst of all, says Santa Sarwinski, are those who serenade.

SS: You can’t say, ”Look take a walk, get the hell out of here.” You know, I’m supposed to be Santa Claus or Santa Claus’ helper. And in the spirit of Christmas and all that garbage.

Children: [singing] And a happy new year.

Speaker 12: Okay, thank you.

SS: All right, thank you children. [Children hollering] I gotta go over to my chimney. I gotta go over to my chimney.

DI: Eddie Sarwinski says he’s never taken the etiquette lessons taught in Santa School too seriously. This a required day of classes for all Santas at the beginning of each season. There the men are taught how to ring their bells, be jolly, ”ho ho ho.”

SS: Ah, the hell with the ”ho ho hos.” You know.

DI: They’re taught how to say ”Merry Christmas” in a dozen languages, and to excuse themselves when they have to go to the bathroom, by explaining to the kids that it’s time to go feed the reindeer.

SS: I just say I gotta go pee, that’s all.

DI: But believe it or not, despite his unorthodox methods, “Cynical Santa” Sarwinski is the all time greatest money-maker in the history of the Volunteers of America. Last week, he pulled in a record $400 in donations on a single day.

SS: Think about it. New Yorkers are cynical people, and you know, they, they kinda know that I’m not a <bleep> artist, ya know.

Speaker 13: If I give ya a buck, will you put your mustache back on and let me take a picture?

SS: Let me take that cigarette first.

DI: As a seven-year-veteran of the Santa business, Sarwinski is full of cynical memories. There are the countless times he’s been kicked and sworn at and spit on, there are the stories of his fellow Santas, like the tipsy one, who accidentally fell through the windows of Bloomingdale’s. Or the Santa, who, desperate for cash, took off his suit and sold it on the Bowery for $10.

Speaker 14: Yo, Santa, what’s happenin?

SS: Nothin’ to it.

DI: It’s evening now at Rockefeller Plaza, and Santa Sarwinski has been working for about 12 hours. Things are not looking rosy, donations have been coming in slowly all day. Relief Santa Smith, who was supposed to give Sarwinski a break every two or three hours, has disappeared. It’s getting colder and colder, but that doesn’t faze Sarwinski a bit. It would take a lot more than that to dampen this “Cynical Santa’s” special Christmas spirit.

SS: Hi, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Speaker 15: Put that on.

SS: Nah, it’s uncomfortable and it’s itchin’ me. It’s just a lot of bull anyway.

DI: Santa Sarwinski, do you have any sort of final Christmas message to leave us with?

SS: Everybody dies. Hi sweetheart, hand me the box. Everybody dies, ya know. And you wonder ”what the hell, what’s it all about?” I do.

DI: For National Public Radio, I’m David Isay. [To SS] Merry Christmas, Santa.

SS: Merry Christmas. Happy Chanukah, whatever.

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MG: That’s “Cynical Santa,” a short radio documentary produced by StoryCorps founder Dave Isay and first broadcast on NPR just before Christmas in 1990.

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And that’s all for this episode. The StoryCorps conversations you heard were produced by Katie Simon and Jud Esty-Kendall. Find out what music we used on our website, storycorps.org and don’t forget to rate or review us wherever you get your podcasts.

If you ever want to leave a message for someone featured on this show, we’ve set up a voicemail for that and we pass your messages along to the StoryCorps participant. Give us a ring at 301-744-TALK, that’s 301-744-TALK. I’m Michael Garofalo and this has been the StoryCorps podcast. Whatever and however you’re celebrating over the next week, happy holidays and thanks for listening.

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