On the table, along with this note, you’ll find your favorite Spam fillets caramelized in Riehle maple syrup and Gatorade for your electrolyte deprived reindeer. There’s also a shot of Monster Hitman Energy Drink to kick your butt from here to Sacramento.  Don’t tell Kathy that I fried Spam in Ted’s maple syrup. She considers that sacrilegious and I’ll be relegated to her $#.?list.   

I’ll make this brief. I don’t want any Christmas gifts this year. I’m slip-sliding into my twilight years and no longer desire material things, except for a fluffy Camo Snuggie.  Please give my presents to endearing geezers who truly deserve them. We both know that I’ll never make your sanctimonious brown-noser list. Hypothetically, it’d be awesome if you paid off our second mortgage and left me one of those bow wrapped Lexus SUV’s spouses gift each other in Christmas commercials. My battle worn 97 Exploder’s leaking life faster than its leaking oil. I plagiarized that image from David Gray. You know what Santa, fuhgeddaboudit. Maintaining a second mortgage and a hemorrhaging vehicle keeps me humble.

Truthfully Santy, I’ve already acquired a few luxuries this year. Deb, my broadminded spouse, commanded me to buy new Wigwam socks to replace my holy Hanes which are melting faster than communion wafers and clogging the washing machine lint filter.  The virgin Wigwams won’t be foot worthy for at least a hundred spin cycles.  

I also acquired a Garmin eTrex Legend HCx handheld GPS, what an intuitive doohickey. I’ll never again be lost in the woods unless the batteries expire, the Chinese shoot down the GNSS satellite constellation, I drop it overboard, I hike during solar storms, or I forget how to turn it on. I needed the GPS to find a remote brook trout pond that Gary Lee clued me into. He directed me to hike up a well used trail to the second wooden bridge, then take a sharp left and bushwhack another mile through blowdown to the Promised Pond. He said a guy left a canoe along the shore from which I could fish.  

“In early October, the brookies jump right into the boat,” Gary promised.  

So I bought the eTrex in anticipation of filling my freezer with suicidal brookies.

Turns out I talked with Gary just before assaulting brook trout nirvana and he mentioned in passing that the guy had removed his canoe. How lucky am I, Santa. As you know, it’s certain death attempting to fish Adirondack ponds from shore. If the bottomless primordial ooze doesn’t trap ya, the concertina shoreline blowdown will. So I’m using my eTrex to find my way to inaccessible places like The Tavern, Frankie’s Taste of Italy, Kinney Drugs and the Strand Theatre. I no longer become disoriented driving back to Camp Moosemaple from Big Moose Station crab leg Sundays. I even use my eTrex to find the outhouse after dark.

We didn’t have GPS back in the days of wooden men and iron ships, when the Navy wasted thousands of dollars training me to navigate an aircraft. They started with a sextant for crying out loud. It was the same one Lt. Horatio Hornblower used to navigate the HMS Hotspur during the Napoleonic Wars. As you know Santa, a handy celestial landmark to shoot with the sextant is Uranus. We relied on dead reckoning, Texaco highway maps, handheld “whiz wheels,” radio beacons, B-scope and ground control radar. Contemporary GPS guided commercial and military aircraft steer themselves.   

Santa, I also purchased Kindle E-Readers for Deb and me. The simplest one to get started with is the Kindle Keyboard 3G. After establishing an Amazon Kindle account, you can use your 3G to download books instantaneously anytime, anywhere. You don’t need a computer or modem to connect to the book store. I realize that Kindles lack the pizzazz of those eye-Paddy thingamabobs, but for acquiring, storing and reading books, they’re numero uno with us. We’re not techies and don’t care to be. We use about twenty percent of the technology available in the whiz-bang doohickeys that own us.   

One of my favorite pastimes is reading a few pages in bed before going cross-eyed. My apologies to our endangered librarians, but I prefer not balancing a clunky conventional book on my chest and reading teeny print. The Kindle’s lightweight and I can adjust the print size to one huge word per page if I desire. The Kindle stores 3,500 books, so when I become bored with a story, I bookmark my progress and heartlessly switch to a more stimulating tome.       

I fell into a rut recently and began downloading survival stories. My reoccurring nightmare is that I’m simultaneously lost in the woods and being devoured by a hammerhead shark. To prepare myself, I downloaded “On the Edge of Survival,” by Spike Walker. It’s a mind blowing account of probably the greatest air/sea rescue in Coast Guard history. Nine story waves, hurricane winds, icy seas, blinding blizzards, a helo crash, a floundering freighter, death defying heroics and multiple Distinguished Flying Crosses. This nail biter kept me on the edge of my bed for three straight nights.  Those Alaska based Coastie rescue fliers are sierra hotel in anybody’s book. It’s a five star read for ten bucks on Kindle.  

Santa, I also procured an infrared wildlife camera. You know, the kind hunters employ to covertly surveil game trails. We’ve a reclusive red fox family residing under our shed and I’m interested in recording petite foxes quarrying tons of dirt from under a shed without capsizing it. The sheer magnitude of the excavation leads me to believe our foxes intend to spend the Chinese New Year with their Peiping brethren. I’ll also use the wildlife cam to secretly record the shameless tomfoolery of unsuspecting drunkards around our evening campfires.   

In short, Santa Baby, thanks for nothing. I have my two front teeth, family and friends. What more does one need for a joyous holiday season? Well, maybe a four stroke Honda BF75 Outboard. Not for naughty me, Santa. It’s for the nice Whaler. God bless us, every one.