Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/fEqTNh-KCDA
or read his transcript below:
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Life, actually…
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THE SNOWMAN WHO WOULDN’T MELT
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Just this week, a young father with two happy wiggly kids in tow came into the shop and purchased a most wonderful lighted top-hatted Snowman for Christmas. I dug through decades of the Red Clay Diary to find this note about the ancestry of Mr. Snowman. It’s all about appreciating whatever we eventually have to let go:
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In my bookshop and museum of fond memories, a large lone Snowman keeps watch over the many dreamy items you can find if you get lost here for a few hours.
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This is the kind of Snowman any child would love. That’s because he never melts.
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This is the kind of Snowman you can trust to be on duty day and night, pleasantly glowing white, always in a good mood, and within protective view of a nearby fifty-year-old life-sized Santa Claus who stares out over the village.
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Around my meltless Snowman’s neck is a violet Slinky, a breezy year-round scarf that offsets the blue and green 3-D glasses he wears. This is one Snowman who sees the world through tinted glasses and, though he has a carrot for a nose, the carrot will stay fresh forever because it, like the Snowman himself, is made of plastic.
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Years ago, the magic Snowman was the last display-model snowman in the annual Fix-Play Display sale—you know, the gigantic Christmas decoration sale that used to be conducted by this long-gone downtown business.
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I adopted the icy figure at the Fix-Play sale and put him in charge of the shop.
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Thousands of suburbanites used to trek here once a year to purchase the kinds of decorations you can’t easily locate anywhere else. Third-and-fourth-generation customers came to Fix-Play, looking for just the right Meltless Snowman or Ancient Santa Claus to keep watch over their Christmas trees by night.
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They went away confident in the knowledge that a Snowman who won’t melt is just about as magic a Christmas present as you can possibly imagine
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© 2024 A.D. by Jim Reed