Christmas with the Bench Boys

By BOB INGRAM
When the weather allows, I ride my bicycle every morning from my friends Robert and Ramona’s condo in Anglesea to the lifeguard station in Wildwood Crest, a radiant round trip of 12 miles whose heart, of course, is the Boardwalk.
During the warmer months, I pass and call “Howdy” to a group of older folks who gather on a particular bench in front of the Ocean Towers in the Crest, kibitzing and yukking it up every morning and just having a grand old time in general. Their pleasure in the morning Boardwalk and each other’s company is evident and heartening, and I feel good for them and about our daily ritual greeting. I call them the Bench Boys to myself – including the one woman – and when I am able to ride in the colder months, I think about them as I pass their spot and wonder what they are up to.
In the off-season, I try to walk on the Boardwalk every major holiday, a private ritual. One Christmas it was muffled and white in a soft blanket of snow and there was a thin coating of ice on the walkway so that my footsteps rang like pistol shots in the stillness as they cracked the ice. I called “Merry Christmas!” and there was no echo.
Another Christmas, it was sunny and pleasantly chilly and the sky a deep, biting blue as I came on to the Boardwalk at 26th Street, swinging past Sam’s Pizza Palace and heading south, exchanging season’s greetings with other holiday strollers, our breaths hanging in white puffs in the clear air.
There was a slight southern breeze, and as I approached the Convention Center, I heard what I thought was singing in the distance, and idly thought that it was probably Christmas music from a church. As I approached the cluster of stores at Ocean Towers, I could hear the music more clearly – Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” – and see a rather large group of people gathered there.
When I got close enough to make out faces, my eyes widened and I said aloud, “Damn … the Bench Boys.” Indeed, there they were, surrounded by what I took to be their spouses and children and grandchildren, having what appeared to be a Christmas party there on their Boardwalk bench.
As I approached, Lew, one of the few Bench Boys I knew by name, called out, “Hey, look, everybody – it’s Bike Man!” All eyes turned my way and then a couple teenage grandchildren started to chant, “Bike Man! Bike Man! Bike Man!” and soon they all took it up, and there I was, slightly embarrassed and more than a little flattered that they had a nickname for me.
When I reached the bench, they quieted down, and I said to Lew, “Hey, you call me ‘Bike Man’ and all this time I’ve been calling you guys the ‘Bench Boys’ to myself.”
“Bench Boys! Bench Boys! Bench Boys!” the kids started up and we had to wait until everybody had stopped chanting before Lew could formally introduce me to the Bench Boys – Chris, Bob, Dan, Mickey, Charlie, Sharon, Frankie, and Jack – who in turn introduced me to their families. There must have been 40 people milling while a boom box played Christmas carols and everyone ate bagels and drank coffee and hot chocolate from two big urns that somebody had lugged up to the Boardwalk on a red express wagon. There was even a small Christmas tree that somebody told me was battery operated so the bulbs would glow in the night. Little kids bounced all around, chasing each other and screaming, their feet clattering on the boardwalk. It was regular Christmas rat race.
We all got to talking and it turned out that the Bench Boys had decided over the summer to gather here on Christmas and share that holiday for an hour or so, and they were particularly happy that they’d all made it. It validated their friendship as more than a passing summer fancy. There was true Christmas warmth and spirit in the air.
I’d been there about 15 minutes when a police cruiser came onto the boardwalk off the Cresse Street ramp, and a buzzcut young patrolman slid the window down when he reached us and leaned over and asked, “What’s all this?”
“It’s Christmas, brother!” somebody yelled. “C’mon, have a bagel and some coffee! Sing a carol with us!”
“Well, actually,” the young cop started, but Chris, one of the Bench Boys, stepped to the car window and said, “It’s all right, officer. We actually have a permit for this.” He handed an envelope through the window, and after the cop read the sheet of paper inside he smiled, handed it back, and said, “Those bagels hot?”
After the policeman had left, the little kids started to get sleepy and you could tell things were winding down when we heard what sounded like sleigh bells drawing closer and we all looked up to see a bright red Hummer stretch limo making its magnificent way toward us. It stopped and we all craned forward to see through the darkly tinted windows, but could only make our own reflections craning back at us.
Presently, the driver’s door popped open and a real, honest-to-God elf in a Christmas elf suit with pointy-toed boots and elf hat jumped down from the phone books he’d been sitting on and opened the back door with a silent flourish.
And out jumped Santa Claus himself, a little grouchy-looking with the white fur on his red suit all soot-stained and raggedy. Another elf handed him a big bag of presents and he lugged it over and laid it in front of the bench while we all just stared at him, dumbfounded. Then he laid his finger along the side his nose and bounded back in the Hummer and slammed the door.
The driver elf came over and announced to us, “We made a special trip.” Then he scooted around and climbed back in and they made a banking U-turn and roared back down the ramp. It hadn’t taken half a minute.
Then the teenagers started chanting, “Santa! Santa! Santa” and everybody took it up until somebody yelled, “The bag! The bag!” Some of the kids grabbed it and looked inside and then one reached in and pulled out two wrapped gifts, one slightly smaller. “There’s a bunch of them!” he yelled.
“Open them!” somebody said. There were two exquisite bracelets – one smaller for kids – and on each was a delicately sculpted representation of the Bench Boys’ bench. And when they’d taken them all out of the bag, there were exactly the right amount for everybody there.
We were amazed and buzzed and speculated, trying to make sense of Santa’s flying visit. There were no marks of any kind on the bracelets or their boxes to indicate where they’d come from, and nobody there would admit to having arranged the whole thing. We finally left, still mystified.
In the summer now when I pass the Bench Boys we call “Merry Christmas!” to each other and hold up our bracelets and they gleam in the sun.
Bob Ingram writes from Burleigh.