Firemen save Santa, crowd yawns

Santa arrived an hour later than we thought to the top of a down­town depart­ment store (we failed to pre­dict the speeches, car­ol­ing, and tree-lighting that pre­ceded his arrival), so we spent the hour watch­ing the local-toy-store stilt-clown, lis­ten­ing to the off-tune stylings of the Kaw Val­ley Drum and Fife Corps (all both of them, Andy Drum and Larry Fife), and engag­ing in var­i­ous “We want Santa!” chants with other freez­ing and annoyed par­ents… the best part was clearly when the Fire Depart­ment came with their police escort to “save” Santa from the top of the build­ing. “Why did Santa’s rein­deer leave him on the roof?” our boy asked. They were prob­a­bly bored and cold, I thought.