A Sweet Day
The intent of the day was to work with the Santa Clause project and finish it up. With a huge roll of the 3M 2X Duct Tape I tackled the dressing room for Santa, aka: storage box. The Santa is 5′ plus his cap pushes the 5’5″. The box is the original shipping container. We would be hard pressed to find a
substitute. When all was said and done I had put a huge dent into the roll of tape. The box had always sat on end. The bottom of the cover rode on the floor over the decades of the box having been moved and there wasn’t much left of it. I use a box we had saved and fabricated a new bottom portion of the cover complete with a whole bunch of my tape. I couldn’t help but put clear tape over the shipping label, saving it for posterity. I do intend to go online and see if that address still remains.
I am quite sure that the beard was manufactured with what was known in the 1950s as angel hair. It didn’t stay on the market for very long as there were multiple concerns that it was virtually fiberglass. All of the beard had been manipulated into curls and stapled onto a cloth stabilizer. Some of the beard needed a bit of work as the curls had “done come undone.” At the time of manufacturing there was what appears to be a spray that was applied over the beard containing it. As much as the red velvet had sprung to life after being vacuumed, there wasn’t much that could be done to take away the decades of airborne impurities that had settled on the white. Oh, by the way . . . on the inside of the belt was a sticker that identified the Santa as a 1959 product. I left the sticker right where I found it.
I really had to hunt for my hair dryer. Since I have had both shoulders replaced, I can’t handle the hair dryer and it was in storage. We needed the hair dryer to soften the black plastic that the belt was made out of. Taking it off had been easy, but getting it strung back through the buckle was a bit difficult. Dennis manned the dryer and it worked as slick as a baby’s butt.
Here it is supper time. Santa is stationed for now in the patio porch with his new improved dressing room. I am sure Dennis will plug him in a time or two before we put him in the box before he comes out for the Christmas season. We did have a great run with this project. We had plenty of help from time to time and Dennis did get to check his eyelids for cracks several times. It may take me some time to figure things out but according to Dad, “You don’t have time to do it right the first time, but you have time to do it over.” Nuff said.
