Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2016-51

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Burke Dykes forwards an example of kindness to strangers
• Marilyn Magid sends a story of children´s gifts to their teacher
• Tom Telfer led me to this story about the origin of Rudolph
• Carol Shoemaker clarifies a myth about reindeer
• If you need help writing, here are tips from an expert
• Rafiki forwards a story about winter boots
• Irene Harvalias shares this tale about a dead donkey
• Sites are suggested by Barbara Wear, Tom Telfer, and Tony Lewis

Burke Dykes forwards this story by an unknown author:

SACK LUNCHES

I put my carry-on in the luggage compartment and sat down in my assigned seat. It was going to be a long flight. ´I´m glad I have a good book to read. Perhaps I will get a short nap," I thought.

Just before take-off, a line of soldiers came down the aisle and filled all the vacant seats, totally surrounding me. I decided to start a conversation. "Where are you headed?" I asked the soldier seated nearest to me.

"Great Lakes Air Base. We´ll be there for two weeks for special training, and then we´re being deployed to Iraq," he answered.

After flying for about an hour, an announcement was made that sack lunches were available for five dollars. It would be several hours before we reached Chicago, and I quickly decided a lunch would help pass the time.

As I reached for my wallet, I overheard the soldier ask his buddy if he planned to buy lunch. "No, that seems like a lot of money for just a sack lunch. Probably wouldn´t be worth five bucks.I´ll wait till we get to Chicago."

His friend agreed.

I looked around at the other soldiers. None were buying lunch. I walked to the back of the plane and handed the flight attendant a fifty dollar bill. "Take a lunch to all those soldiers." She grabbed my arms and squeezed tightly. Her eyes wet with tears, she thanked me. "My son was a soldier in Iraq ... it´s almost like you are doing it for him."

Picking up ten sacks, she headed up the aisle to where the soldiers were seated. She stopped at my seat and asked, "Which do you like best - beef or chicken?" "Chicken," I replied, wondering why she asked.

She turned and went to the front of plane, returning a minute later with a dinner plate from first class. "This is your thanks."

After we finished eating, I went again to the back of the plane, heading for the rest room. A man stopped me. "I saw what you did. I want to be part of it. Here, take this." He handed me twenty-five dollars.

Soon after I returned to my seat, I saw the Flight Captain coming down the aisle, looking at the aisle numbers as he walked. I hoped he was not looking for me, but noticed he was looking at the numbers only on my side of the plane. When he got to my row he stopped, smiled, held out his hand, and said, "I want to shake your hand."

Quickly unfastening my seat belt, I stood and took the Captain´s hand. With a booming voice he said, "I was a soldier and I was a military pilot. Once, someone bought me a lunch. It was an act of kindness I never forgot." I was embarrassed when applause was heard from all of the passengers.

Later I walked to the front of the plane so I could stretch my legs. A man who was seated about six rows in front of me reached out his hand, wanting to shake mine. He left another twenty-five dollars in my palm.

When we landed in Chicago, I gathered my belongings and started to deplane. Waiting just inside the airplane door was a man who stopped me, put something in my shirt pocket, turned, and walked away without saying a word. Another twenty-five dollars!

Upon entering the terminal, I saw the soldiers gathering for their trip to the base. I walked over to them and handed them seventy-five dollars. "It will take you some time to reach the base. It will be about time for a sandwich. God bless you."

Ten young men left that flight feeling the love and respect of their fellow travellers. As I walked briskly to my car, I whispered a prayer for their safe return. These soldiers were giving their all for our country. I could only give them a couple of meals. It seemed so little.

Marilyn Magid forwards this story of

CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR THE TEACHER

On the last day before the holiday, the children brought gifts for their teacher.

The supermarket manager´s daughter brought the teacher a basket of assorted fruit; the florist´s son brought the teacher a bouquet of flowers. The candy-store owner´s daughter gave the teacher a pretty box of candy.

The liquor-store owner´s son brought up a big, heavy box. The teacher lifted it up and noticed that it was leaking a little bit. She touched a drop of the liquid with her finger and tasted it.

"Is it wine?" she guessed.

"No," the boy replied.

She tasted another drop and asked,"Champagne?"

"No," said the little boy … "It´s a puppy!"

From History in the Headlines, here is the story of the origin of

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER

Although firmly entrenched as a Christmas icon, the tale of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is a piece of relatively modern folklore penned in 1939 by a department store adman enduring a time of great personal tragedy. As Rudolph turns 75, here is the story behind the creation of the most famous reindeer of all.

Balsam wreaths and visions of sugarplums had barely faded in the first weeks of 1939, but thoughts inside the Chicago headquarters of retail giant Montgomery Ward had already turned to the next Christmas 11 months away. The retailer had traditionally purchased and distributed coloring books to children as a holiday promotion, but the advertising department decided it would be cheaper and more effective instead to develop its own Christmas-themed book in-house.

The assignment fell to Robert May, a copywriter with a knack for turning a limerick at the company´s holiday party. The adman, however, had difficulty summoning up holiday cheer, and not just because of the date on the calendar. Not only was the United States still trying to shake the decade-long Great Depression while the rumblings of war grew once again Europe, but May´s wife was suffering with cancer and the medical bills had thrown the family into debt. Sure, he was pursuing his passion to write, but churning out mail order catalog copy about men´s shirts instead of penning the Great American Novel was not what he had envisioned himself doing at age 33 with a degree from Dartmouth College.

Given the assignment to develop an animal story, May thought a reindeer was a natural for the leading role (not to mention that his four-year-old daughter, Barbara, loved the reindeers every time she visited the zoo). As he peered out at the thick fog that had drifted off Lake Michigan, May came up with the idea of a misfit reindeer ostracized because of his luminescent nose who used his physical abnormality to guide Santa´s sleigh and save Christmas. Seeking an alliterative name, May scribbled possibilities on a scrap of paper - Rollo, Reginald, Rodney and Romeo were among the choices - before circling his favorite, Rudolph.

As May worked on "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" through the summer, his wife´s health worsened. She passed away in July 1939. Now a widower and a single father, May refused the offer of his boss to give the assignment to someone else. "I needed Rudolph now more than ever," he later wrote. Burying his grief, May finished the story in August.

The 89 rhyming couplets in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" borrow from Clement Clarke Moore´s "A Visit from St. Nicholas" right from the story´s opening line: "Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills/The reindeer were playing…enjoying the spills." Hans Christian Andersen´s fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" also inspired the storyline, as did May´s own childhood when he endured taunts from schoolmates for being small and shy. "Rudolph and I were something alike," the copywriter told Guideposts magazine in January 1975. "As a child I´d always been the smallest in the class. Frail, poorly coordinated, I was never asked to join the school teams."

Those familiar with only the 1964 animated television version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which remains the longest-running Christmas special in television history a half-century after its debut on NBC, might not recognize the original tale. There is no Hermey the elf, no Abominable Snow Monster, not even the Land of Misfit Toys. While Rudolph was taunted for his glowing red nose and disinvited from reindeer games in May´s story, he did not live at the North Pole and was asleep in his house when Santa Claus, struggling mightily with the fog, arrived with presents and realized how the reindeer´s radiant snout could help him complete his Christmas Eve rounds.

Montgomery Ward had high hopes for its new 32-page, illustrated booklet, which would be given as a free gift to children visiting any of the department store´s 620 locations. "We believe that an exclusive story like this aggressively advertised in our newspaper ads and circulars," the advertising department stated in a September 1939 memo, "can bring every store an incalculable amount of publicity … and, far more important, a tremendous amount of Christmas traffic."

The retailer´s holiday advertisements touted "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" as "the rollicking new Christmas verse that´s sweeping the country!" That wasn´t just hype. Children snapped up nearly 2.4 million copies of the paper-bound book in 1939. Plans to print another 1.6 million copies the following year were shelved by paper shortages due to World War II, and Rudolph remained on hiatus until the conflict´s conclusion. When the reindeer story returned in 1946, it was more popular than ever as Montgomery Ward handed out 3.6 million copies of the book.

In the interim, May married a fellow Montgomery Ward employee and became a father again, but he still struggled financially. In 1947, the retailer´s board of directors, stirred either by the holiday spirit or belief that the story lacked revenue-making potential, signed the copyright for "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" over to May. In short order, May licensed a commercial version of the book, along with a full range of Rudolph-themed merchandise including puzzles, View-Master reels, snow globes, mugs and slippers with sheep wool lining and leather soles.

In 1949, songwriter Johnny Marks, who happened to be May´s brother-in-law, set Rudolph´s story to music. After Bing Crosby reportedly turned down the chance, singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded the song, which sold two million copies in the first year and remains one of the best-selling tunes of all time.

The song and merchandise sales made May financially comfortable, but hardly rich. After leaving Montgomery Ward in 1951 to manage the Rudolph commercial empire, May returned to his former employer seven years later. He continued to work as a copywriter until his 1971 retirement. By the time he died five years later, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" had become a piece of modern folklore and a metaphor for overcoming obstacles, embracing differences, and recognizing everyone´s unique potential.

Speaking of Rudolph, Carol Shoemaker sets the record straight on the matter of

SANTA´S REINDEER

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year (the only members of the deer family, Cervidae, to have females do so), male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December. Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring.

Therefore, according to every historical rendition depicting Santa´s reindeer, every single one of them, from Rudolf to Blitzen, had to be a girl.

We should´ve known. Only females would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

For anyone wanting to write for the Tale Spinner or other publications, here are some useful hints from Frank Visco, vice-president and senior copywriter at USAdvertising:

HOW TO WRITE GOOD

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They´re old hat.)

4. Employ the vernacular.

5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

8. Contractions aren´t necessary.

9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

10. One should never generalize.

11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

13. Don´t be redundant; don´t more use words than necessary; it´s highly superfluous.

14. Profanity sucks.

15. Be more or less specific.

16. Understatement is always best.

17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

20. The passive voice is to be avoided.

21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

Rafiki forwards a story that anyone who has ever dressed a child will love:

THE WINTER BOOTS

Did you hear about the teacher who was helping one of her pupils put on his boots?

He asked for help and she could see why. Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn´t want to go on. By the time they got the second boot on, she had worked up a sweat.

She almost cried when the little boy said, "Teacher, they´re on the wrong feet."

She looked, and sure enough, they were.

Unfortunately, it wasn´t any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on, this time on the correct feet.

He then announced, "These aren´t my boots."

She bit her tongue, rather than get right in his face and scream, "Why didn´t you say so?" like she wanted to.

Once again, she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet.

No sooner had they got the boots off when he said, "They´re my brother´s boots. But my Mom made me wear ´em today."

Now she didn´t know if she should laugh or cry. But she mustered up what grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots BACK onto his feet again.

Helping him into his coat, she asked, "Now, where are your mittens?"

He said, "I stuffed ´em in the toes of my boots...."

She´ll be eligible for parole in three years.

Irene Harvalias forwards this story:

FOLLOWING PROTOCOL

Father O´Malley rose from his bed one morning. It was a fine spring day in his new Washington, D.C. parish. He walked to the window of his bedroom to get a deep breath of the beautiful day outside.

He then noticed there was a donkey lying dead in the middle of his front lawn.

He promptly called the White House.The conversation went like this: "Good morning. This is Donald Trump. How might I help you?"

"And the best of the day te yerself. This is Father O´Malley at St. Ann´s Catholic Church. There´s a donkey lying dead on me front lawn and would ye be so kind as to send a couple o´ yer lads to take care of the matter?"

Trump, considering himself to be quite a wit and recognizing the Irish accent, thought he would have a little fun with the good father, replied, "Well, now, Father, it was always my impression that you people took care of the last rites!"

There was dead silence on the line for a moment. Father O´Malley then replied: "Aye,´ tis certainly true; but we are also obliged to notify the next of kin first, which is the reason for me call."

SUGGESTED SITES

Barbara Wear sends this link to a video of a quartet of kids lip-syncing to a wonderful Christmas song:

Barbara also forwards the URL for a bunch of kids telling the Christmas story of Bethle-ha-ha-ham and the magical star that appeared:

Tom Telfer forwards this link to "White Christmas" performed by Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters - with a cartoon feauring Santa and his reindeers:

Tom also sends the URL for six-second videos created by Zach King which make one wonder how he does it:

Tony Lewis forwards the URL for a site that shows a novel way to hang a painting on a wall, which he says is brilliant in its simplicity:

In this TED talk, Kevin Kelly discusses the role of artificial intelligence over the next 30 years, driven by patterns that are surprising but inevitable:

On World AIDS Day (Dec 1), hundreds of grandmothers and grandothers across Canada participated in a nationwide series of #GrandmothersCampaign flash mobs to call the world´s attention to the scale of the global AIDS epidemic and the herculean role African grandmothers are playing in the response:

This Muslim-owned restaurant in London is offering free Christmas meals for the homeless and elderly:

From the Huffington Post, here are some surprising animal thieves:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary," which changes daily, go to