THE SCARRED OAK. William Walraven
so I made a quick decision. When a very old person farts in church, nobody will blame her because of her age. However, if they all suspected that it was me, the whole village would talk about this for a couple of weeks. Don’t tell Mother anything about this.”
Eric felt better, and they continued home.
Holland located on the North Sea, that part of the ocean between England and Europe, has a sea climate. The summers are mild but with a lot of rain when the wind comes from the west from the sea, spring and fall is beautiful, and winters are very raw. In general, however, the temperature in winter doesn’t drop too far below the freezing point, and the snow was not more than five or six inches at the most at one time, but the icy cold winds filled with ice crystals played havoc with any unprotected part of the body. It was winter again and getting closer to St. Nicholas and Christmas. The raw, howling winds would whistle tunes in the chimney flute, and Eric, sitting on the heavy cast iron coal box beside the kitchen stove, could listen for hours while watching his mother preparing the evening meal.
“I noted that your carrot was still in your shoe this morning,” said his mother without looking at him. “You know that is a reminder from St. Nicholas and Black Peter.”
Eric was shocked. He didn’t know that his mother noticed it, too, this morning. It took him by surprise, because he had woken up very early and sneaked down the stairway to see what had happened to his wooden shoes and his brother Johann’s. A terrible feeling came over him when he discovered that the carrot was gone from Johann’s shoes but was still in his. What had he done to deserve this? He was in disgrace with St. Nicholas, and that meant no presents on St. Nicholas Day. He didn’t feel the cold in the kitchen but sat there in the kitchen chair, in deep thought, trying to find out what he did wrong.
Could it have been the incident with Kathy yesterday at the kindergarten? He had pulled a little too hard on her hair so that she’d started crying when he ran into her while playing with the other boys on the playground. These dumb girls were constantly in the way. They were only good for playing with dolls or playing house. But surely, they weren’t rough enough to play with the boys. He was lucky enough that his parents had chosen him to be a boy. What would have happened if he were a girl? Just terrible!
Or was it that he had forgotten last night to bring the kindling inside the house and put it neatly underneath the kitchen stove for his mother to light the kitchen fire the next morning? It was his job, but he had been playing too long outside last night with the children, and when he came home, it was so late that his mother reprimanded him. He had been angry about that because he felt he really wasn’t that late, but surely, he wouldn’t go and get kindling for her now after she spoiled the happy mood he was in. She must have done it herself because he noticed the kindling underneath the stove.
This St. Nicholas certainly was a holy man if he knew all that had happened this quickly. Somehow, he had to set things right today with his mother and with Kathy. Otherwise, it was no use for him to put out his wooden shoes again tonight.
His thoughts were interrupted when he heard his mother coming down the steps. Quickly he took the carrot out of the wooden shoe and hid it in the garbage can. He couldn’t let his mother know because she would ask questions about why the carrot was still in his shoe, and he was not in the mood to answer any of them this early in the morning.
When his mother entered the kitchen, she looked in surprise at Eric. “What are you doing up so early? You must be freezing down here in the kitchen.”
“Well, I just woke up early this morning, and I couldn’t sleep any longer,” answered Eric.
“Come on, go upstairs and quickly put your clothes on before you catch a cold,” she said while kindly pushing him out of the kitchen door in the direction of the stairway.
While Eric was gone, his mother noticed the missing carrot out of Eric’s shoe, and a faint smile came onto her face. She knew her youngster. He would be worried all day, but he would try to make up for whatever he thought he did wrong.
That day, he pushed an apple into Kathy’s hands, a real shining apple, because he had rubbed it for quite some time on his trousers. Kathy had a surprised look on her face, but Eric was gone already before she could ask a question.
He was really surprised to see the look on his mother’s face when the carrot was gone out of the shoe that morning. How could she know? He was up before her, but then he had experienced in many situations that mothers seemed to know everything, and he didn’t ask the question that was on the tip of his lips. Without saying a word, he got up and went to the stall, found a carton, and filled it up to the top with kindling. It was so heavy that when he finally reached the kitchen, he was out of breath.
“Here, Mother,” he uttered. “This will surely be enough for two days.”
“Eric, you shouldn’t have,” replied his mother. “That was too heavy for you.” But then she picked her youngster up, hugged him, and kissed him on both cheeks. Somehow Eric knew at that time that his carrot would be gone the next morning.
Already more than a month before St. Nicholas Day, the sixth of December, the younger children were kept in line by the constant warning of their parents that they would tell St. Nicholas all about their bad deeds. Night after night, they had to place their wooden shoes filled with fresh straw, a carrot, some bread, and a piece of paper filled with their wants—if possible, in their own handwriting—as they awaited the arrival of St. Nicholas on a white horse and his helper, Black Pete.
The carrots and the straw in the wooden shoes were a gift for the horse. If the wooden shoes of some of the children in one family were emptied the next morning and some were not, that meant that Black Pete had come that night, gone down the chimney (hence the name Black Pete), and would deliver the message of the good, behaving children to the saint. But the untouched wooden shoes were a warning for their owners that a lot of catching up and good deeds had to be done.
The story of St. Nicholas was as follows: Some centuries ago, Nicholas, a bishop of Madrid, Spain, was walking one evening through his city and found the massacred bodies of a couple of children in a barrel. The bishop was so shocked by this cruel and bizarre scenery that he fell on his knees and prayed to the Lord to return life to these bodies. The Lord granted his wishes, and the children came to life again. This story, true or false, made this bishop a saint and was chosen in Holland as the saint for the children. St. Nicholas was dressed as a bishop. He had his staff, high pointed hat, and long white beard and mustache, and he sat on a white horse. Black Pete dressed in colorful clothing with short bulging pants and a cap on his head and a large plumb feather leading the horse. They made a trio that demanded respect even by the rowdiest of the youngsters.
Black Pete was a young man who had colored his face and hands black because of the lack of colored people at that time in the villages of southern Holland. Ringing a hand bell or rattling a chain, he drove many tiny tots into a tantrum or drove the wide-eyed, panic-stricken older ones behind their father or mother, holding on for life to their legs, when this trio passed through the village to the local school grounds a couple of days before St. Nicholas Day.
Seated on a golden throne in one of the classrooms, the friendly, smiling saint would welcome the children one after the other. The quiet ones could sit on his lap, but the screaming little ones, who by now were carried on their father’s or mother’s arm into the room, squeezing the daylights out of the already embarrassed parent, would only be patted by the white gloved hand of the saint, which drove their little bodies even further into life-saving jerks that many times completely closed the windpipes of the bulging-eyed parents trying to utter at least a few friendly words in apology. Quickly, Black Pete, who had a big gunny sack filled with candies, cookies, and little presents, would push a handful of these goodies into the hands of the parent. Trying to ease the situation, Black Pete would smile at the youngster, which most of the time ended up into the cliché of the event.
Seeing only the white of the eyes and teeth of the smiling Black Pete made the youngster scream at the top of his lungs and would hasten the embarrassed parents through a maze of anxious onlookers who still had to follow that same path. At the exit, the youngster, heaving for breath and losing his grip, would calm down.