Terry K Woods
As told to Terry by Ben Ludenberger, January 1972.
Wick Ludenberger worked on his dad’s canal boat, the BOILVAR, from the time he was able to drive a team or handle the lock gates until his dad quit boating after the season of 1905 or ‘06. I was able to get Wick and his younger brother Ben to let me interview them both on audio tape at Ben’s home in Bolivar Ohio one Saturday afternoon in January of 1972. Since Christmas is rapidly approaching one of the short tales Wick related that afternoon seems to be quite appropriate. He remembers being four or five at the time this story took place. Wick was born in 1892, so that would mean that it was in 1896 or 97 that little “Wick” Ludenberger first saw Santa Claus.
“ We got froze in one winter just this side of Canal Dover. We had about a half load of coal on board so we decided to stay right where we were instead of trying to make it to the farm at Bolivar to winter at Grandma’s as we usually did.
“Christmas Eve came. There was snow on the ground and everything was froze up. A fellow named Jim Steiner was there that winter too. He had a daughter about 15 or 16 years old. Dad and Jim had been to Canal Dover on the team. I don’t know if they got that Santy Claus suit while they was there or not, but the Steiner girl, maybe somebody put her up to it, decided she was going to play Santy Claus for us kids in all those boats – there was six or seven boats froze up there with us then. I must have been about four or five, because I don’t think Ralph was born yet, but Ben was.
“We was all sitten in the aft cabin of our boat with Mom and Mrs. Steiner. I don’t know where Dad and Jim were. There was a hatch on top of the cabin, the stern deck was up there, with a step-ladder kind of arrangement leading down from the hatch into the cabin. I remember I was sitten on the bottom step. I suppose we were all playen some kind of game or something – when all of a sudden – that hatch flew open, AND THERE WAS SANTY CLAUS. He throwed a bunch of candy and nuts down through the hatch onto the floor. Us kids like to be scared to death. Back under the bunks we all scurried. And that’s the first time I saw Santy Claus.
“The reason I know it was the Steiner girl playen Santy Claus was that, to top things all off – – I don’t know whatever made her try to go around on the gunnel, on the outside of the boat. She could have gone along the catwalk from the stern cabin over the cargo holds and then onto the bank from the bow deck, but she tried to swing down to the gunnel from the stern deck and walk around on it along the outside of the boat to the bank, instead. She must have missed her footing when she swung down, because she fell right into the canal. The ice there along the bank wasn’t that thick and she went right through it into the water. There must have been six or seven feet of water there where she went in.
“We all ran up on deck and Mom and Mrs Snyder, and some of the other folks from the nearby boats, helped fish her out. With that Santy Claus suit on, and how cold it was, and the ice and everything, they had the devil of a time getting her back on board. It’s a wonder she didn’t drown. I don’t think she ever played Santy Claus again, and I know that I’ll never forget that Christmas.”