Look Closely, Virginia
Drop into Watsontown soon. Santa’s workshop and his “reindeer” pen are still there at the foot of the river bridge as you enter town.1
The only change in the display from 1972 to 2022 that I can see is the addition of a happy, cartoonish Santa placard on the side of the deer shed.
Perhaps this smiley icon is meant to comfort the troubled youngsters who find themselves drawn into the melancholic scene of a Santa-in-profile feeding two leery deer from his outstretched hand.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he wears black John Lennon glasses and lives in a windowless, grey chateau on the outskirts of Vilnius, Lithuania.
The “snowscape,” peppered finely with evergreens and blemishes, is oddly realistic and weirdly surrealistic at the same time. Someone with a fine hand and a vivid imagination put down those strokes of acrylic paint.
I was there to watch it take shape.
What Goes On in the Art Room
By the time I reached the end of my freshman year at Warrior Run High School, I had found my niche in The Art Room.
My best friend's dad, Marlin Troutman, had transformed part of the basement of our school into a creative domain, complete with tilted drawing desks.2
The darkroom was equipped with decent speakers and fueled by an LP player, providing a cozy, if creepy, sanctuary for us photographers working the enlargers under red lights to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Matt,3 our friend who painted the Santa scene, enjoyed turning girls upside down in the darkness.4
When he wasn’t on that mission, he was making paintings or constructing a foot-long snail out of plaster wrap and lavishing it with splashes of psychedelic color.5
His artistic vision and technical skill were unrivaled.
He painted a cluster of back-lit clouds similar to the ones on John Lennon’s Mind Games album cover. We all marveled at it. He took it home and destroyed it.
Those Mind Games
On an Art Photo Club trip to Manhattan led by Mr. Troutman, Matt repeatedly barfed in a paper bag on the subway just hours after we arrived.
Apparently, he had found some “bad stuff” on the street.
None of us understood mental illness or the roots of substance abuse back then, and we sure as hell didn’t have any sympathy for those who suffered.
But my best mate, Tom Troutman, that dear, intuitive soul, sat next to Matt, attending to him while the rest of us winced and longed to emerge from under ground.
Orange Julius
On the single occasion I hung out with Matt at his house, we were upstairs in his bedroom digging the stereo separation on David Bowie's Station to Station.
I glanced up, and he was gauging two holes in an orange with an X-Acto knife.
Juice was pouring down his hands as he stuffed a tiny screen into one hole and clumsily punched some pot down into it.
With a lit Bic lighter poised above the orange, he sucked heavily on the other hole, juices streaming down over his chin.
Butane flames sputtered and mingled with the fruit’s flesh, and Matt kept on toking and choking.
Catching a break in his heinous operation, he casually looked up at my dumbfounded face and held out my reward.
Want a toke?
Uh, not really, Matt. I better get home.
That was a rather ponderous bike ride through the quiet streets of W-town!
Matt the Gift Giver
I’m very thankful that the elders of my hometown continue to grace the season with Matt’s painting. It’s not smiley-elfey, and that seems appropriate to me.
After all, Christmas is a celebration of God’s love landing in the barren winter of all of our human tragedy and longings.
May they ever keep that strange painting presentable and never throw it on the trash heap.
Staring at it now, I see more of Matt each day: the paunchy stature, the counter-cultural glasses, and the outstretched hand that may have been a cry for help as much as a gift.
Two whitetails grace the pen, lounging on straw. Never fear animal cruelty, though. These guys will only suffer boredom until they’re returned to the deer farm from whence they came. They’re not exactly wild. Years before the strange Santa painting fronted this holiday display, Rudolph, an albino deer, was the star of the show, a shocking and memorable site much like the cover of any Edgar Winters album.
At the front of the class near his teacher's desk, students would cower a few feet from Mr. Troutman, and the rest of us would suppress laughter. The combination of continual coffee input with his pipe smoking (presumably in the teacher's lounge) created a rather pungent effect when he talked.
I changed the artist’s name to protect his privacy.
I had my own fun in the dark. While a flimsy National Geographic record was playing “The Songs of the Humpback Whale,” I hid under the enlarger table . . . waiting. With no notice, I thrust out my hand and throttled Gary Houtz’s ankle and held it tight. He stiffened, pointed his head to the ceiling, and quietly exhaled, "AAAAAhhhhhhhh," then lashed out at me. I slipped out into the lighted rooms unscathed.
The snail exists, covered in dust, in the late Marlin Troutman’s breezeway. I hope that one day it will be be displayed and enjoyed, just like the surreal Santa.