Three days after the big ice storm, Old Man Thompson didn’t come in to Dot’s Diner for his usual Thursday Special.
The sheriff found him sitting on his tractor, hands frozen to the wheel. Why he was on it when it was too early to plant, nobody knows.
“Can he still be Santa for the kids?” asked Miss Blake, the kindergarten teacher. “Just dress and pose him for a little bit?”
She wasn’t very bright.
The sheriff took Old Man Thompson’s place. A kid asked to see his gun, it went off, and the town had two funerals for Christmas.