ALCOHOL WAS A FACTOR: Weekly Newspapering in Rural Alaska

Kevin Woods is The Real Santa Claus.”

So, there I was, standing inside the covered entrance of the IGA on Main Street in Haines, Alaska, wearing a borrowed Santa’s cap, red apron and jingly bracelet on my wrist.

There was a red kettle by my side.

A gray-haired woman passed with an armload of groceries. I gave her a solicitous smile. She slipped a five-dollar-bill into the kettle.

“Wow, thank you!” I gave her two mini candy canes.

“No, thank you,” she responded, “for volunteering for such a good cause.”

I beamed; until the man in the trucker’s cap and Xtratufs appeared. I wished him a Merry Christmas in a sing-songy voice, the kind only used for that particular phrase.

“I don’t want to hear that word,” he said. “Ho humbug!”

You take the good with the bad here on the front lines of the holiday season in rural America, up here north of the Lower 48.

You see them everywhere around Christmas: the cold and runny-nosed, ringing their Salvation Army bells in the worst kind of weather. Many aren’t given much notice; the idea is that, like with a schizophrenic on the street, if you look at them, then you have to deal with them.

Back home, as I slink through my days, brooding and stoop-shouldered, I have been an offender — often too busy and, yes, I’ll admit, too cheap.

In Haines, things are different.

I wanted in on the action because I’m somewhat of an anomaly here: a winter visitor who has stuck around — an outsider who is curious what it feels like on the inside. So, I called Lt. Kevin Woods in Haines and signed up for a four-hour shift as a Salvation Army bell-ringer.

I met Kevin at 10 a.m. It’s easy work, he said. Like being a Walmart greeter dressed in red.

You don’t stand out in the cold, (9-degrees kind of cold) but inside, where it’s warm. Kevin has manned kettles around the country. The work has helped saved him. He showed me a picture of himself as a prison inmate, back when he stole things to support a meth and heroin habit.

I looked at the man now — big, well-fed. No more tweaker-like flesh and bone. He was happier.

No more taking. Now Kevin’s a giver.

Usually, there are two volunteer ringers, but not today.

“So, I’m alone?”

“You can handle that,” he said. “You aren’t a-feared, are ya?”

As we talked, a bearded fellow passed. “He’s taking the whole day,” he teased.

“And you’re taking the next day, right?” Kevin shot back.

“Call me after New Year.”

There were apparently a few rules to this kettle business. I wasn’t to shake my wrist chimes non-stop, only when shoppers passed, because it got on the nerves of the checkout clerks. And I was warned to stay away from the little bell entirely; that drove people ballistic.

Kevin said that was pretty normal, and at a store someplace south, the bell-ringer went bell-less: He was given a piece of cardboard with the word “Ding!” written on one said, and “Dong!” on the other.

I walked over and asked Becky, the regular Saturday IGA clerk.

So, what’s up with the bells?

“Please don’t ring that bell all day,” she said with a weary smile. “The other lady in here yesterday would not stop. I almost dumped a hundred-dollar bill into that kettle just to get her out of here. And I don’t have that kind of money.”

I followed Kevin’s instructions: My job was to smile, make eye-contact and never actually solicit money.

“Don’t even mention the kettle,”

Kevin said. Let it speak for itself.

The kettle knows. The kettle is all knowing.

“If you don’t know a Salvation Army kettle by now,” he said, “you’ve been living under a rock somewhere.”

The plastic kettle also came with a lock. There have been thefts in other places, but never in Haines, he said. That’s just the ways the kettles came, he said. Still, I told myself, stay vigilant.

There were more gentle instructions: Don’t offer a candy cane to every kid, check with the adult first. Because if they take one their mother doesn’t want them to have, there’ll be trouble, some very un-holiday-like tears. And another thing; I was to stand off to the side and not get in people’s way.

And then Kevin was gone. I was alone. I glanced at my watch, causing the chimes to ring. It must be almost 11 by now.

It was 10:08 a.m. Time began its crawl toward 2 p.m.

I’d let my beard go a couple of days, hoping an unruly look would appeal to burly fisherman types. A few passed without giving me a second look. A kid in a black hooded sweatshirt with the phrase “Think snow” passed and I said hello. He nodded back. The beard must be working, I thought.

As time passed, I noticed things. One toddler wanted to take a toy out of the donation box, as his mother explained that those were for children less fortunate. And nearby, at the holiday table stocked with free food, a chubby kid kept appearing, refilling his plate.

And a mother trustingly left her 4-year-old son on the bench near the front door, with a plate of food, as she shopped inside. That just would not happen outside a small town, I thought.

I saw wealthy-looking people pass, and those who looked a bit more down and out. I quickly devised a friendliness meter: Some were so warm the thing was off the charts. Others passed with an underfed New England smile. Some said nothing at all.

That’s when Ruth stopped by. She set her possessions on a bench next to my kettle and began eating a snack. She had a gentle air and I knew almost immediately she was Native American — a local Chilkat Indian.

Ruth assured me that time moved oh-so-slowly at the kettle. She’d already done two shifts. She lived in social security and she loved alone.

Ruth said she’d been orphaned as a child and was sent to an orphanage of near Juneau.

I asked her if she still spoke her native tongue.

“They beat it out of me,” she said softly. “You can forget your own language if they beat you long enough.”

I told Ruth I was always very proud of being part of the white man’s tribe.

Ruth stayed an hour. I was sad to see her pack up and walk away, dressed in sneakers with gripper soles on a cold winter day.

Then Mountain blew in. He was traveling with a fat, gray-bearded guy who hung with a rough crowd down at the Fogcutter Bar. As the story goes, the newspaper’s owner, Tom Morphet, once got roughed up in there. The bar send him a letter, inviting him to come so they could rough him up some more for the things he wrote.

I stay clear of the place.

Mountain had a southern accent but said he was from somewhere in Alaska. He was here looking for work, some kind of construction job, which were pretty hard to find come winter.

He was dressed like a colorful gypsy. With panache, his long hair tied back in a colorful wrap. He said he made all his own clothes. I would have bought some if they were my size.

As we talked, he gently motioned to my midsection.

I looked down. My fly was open. When I looked back up, smiling and embarrassed, Mountain was looking the other way, purposefully, to give me a moment of privacy to right myself.

We’re pals now, me and Mountain. We say howdy when we pass on the frozen streets.

Well, a mountain came, then a perfect stormy blew in.

The Feltist barged into the lobby, set his box of felt on the table and began regaling me with a story about he once climbed the downtown flagpole in his underwear on a dare. He threw his big expressive bear paws into the air and almost swiped a few passing old ladies.

I loved the Feltist, but he was definitely not kettle material. He was cutting down on my contributions.

Finally, Tom Morphet walked in. Tom has played his trumpet at the kettle in past years. He said I needed a Santa’s hat, or else I’d look like some typical local miscreant hovering too close to the kettle.

He ran back to the office and returned with three. That’s what happens when you live in a small town for three decades; you have not one, but three Santa’s hats for just this occasion.

Suddenly, blessedly, I was alone again. It was time to get down to business and make some money. Kevin said he counted each person’s take and wanted to have a contest, but didn’t know if people wanted to turn a charity into a competition.

I greeted people, and then I greeted some more.

Pretty soon, even I got bored with Merry Christmas. So, like a would-be comedian, I tried out a few lines to see if they flew. “Go straight home” and

“Stay out of trouble” got some laughs.

Then a woman one-upped me.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” I said. “Or as they used to say in my neighborhood, “Yo! Yo! Yo!”

“We all used to say that in the old days,” she said. “Now we’re all just yo-yos.”

An elderly woman took one look at me and with a with a gracious smile, said, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” Indeed; the snow outside was blowing sideways.

By 1:45 p.m., this one-man army was looking for salvation: his replacement.

Kevin came by and I proudly announced that I’d collected maybe $20. (He later told me it was more like $35.)

He smiled. In an eight-hour shift in Haines, he’d garnered $500.

“I work it,” he said. And if he can’t fill volunteer holiday shifts, he works them himself.

I went home feeling somewhat of an imposter in my Santa’s hat — because Lt. Kevin Woods is the real Santa Claus in this town.