Best Christmas Ever

By Brenda Bowen Wright

            My best Christmas had to be the Christmas of 1978. I started working as an undercover narcotics agent, fresh out of the academy just three months earlier. One of the guys I worked with had asked me if I’d like to work after hours with him doing house-painting. Cops don’t make much money so everyone had second jobs. Besides, our shift was 6:00pm to 2:00 am. Why not work in the morning hours before you go hang out in bars all night? From painting together, Terry and I became best friends. We often discussed dialogs we would use in trying to get complete strangers to sell us illegal drugs. We called these our “Mutt and Jeff” routines, in reference to the famous comic strip of our parent’s era.

            By the end of the year, both of us have about a week of comp time built up and needed to use it before 1979 takes over. Terry asked me if I would like to go to Disneyland with him for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I was twenty-five years old and had never been to Disneyland so I jumped at the chance. It was no longer fun to sit at home alone with my parents in rural Utah for Christmas. I knew it’d miss the… nope nothing, I would miss nothing by going to Disneyland.

            We journeyed over the desert and found lodging the first night in Las Vegas. I had never seen Vegas. The lights were amazing, more beautiful than anything I had imagined. So many light bulbs, it truly looked like a shining star on the floor of the desert guiding each weary traveler into the city. When I descended into the lights of the city, my sense of hearing was bombarded by the mesmerizing and constant clanging of dropping coins from the old-time slot machines. The noise overwhelming me more than the lights. All the people appeared too joyous, too loud and too drunk. Las Vegas was definitely collecting a lot of taxes from the travelers that night.

Needing to finally escape all the noise and lights of the partiers, Terry and I humbly entered our dirty, animal smelling, worn-out sleazy stable conveniently located above the bar of some two-bit Fremont street inn. That was all we could afford during the holiday. The cigarette smoke wafted up unfiltered from the bar directly into our room. My eyes burned and stung all night. In the morning we roamed the strip sucking up every cheap shrimp cocktail we were offered as we moseyed through a few of the more famous and fancy hotels. Before long, we continued on across the desert to Anaheim and to hopefully a comfortable Christmas Eve.

            I had never seen the freeways of California. That evening they were shrouded in a heavy fog. We could hardly see where to go and had to focus on the steady stream of car lights in front of us. It felt spooky, more like Halloween than Christmas Eve and it was a weirdly warm Christmas Eve compared to what I was used to in Utah. The outdoor holiday lights glowed through thick layer of fog rather than a layer of snow as in Salt Lake City.

We were tired and ready for a rest. Problem was, we hadn’t eaten for many hours and the sun had set. Where do you find a place to eat on a sacred holiday in a huge, foggy, dark city you have never been to? Oh, great tides of joy, we spotted a bar! We knew taverns, worked in them all the time. One particular bar looked like not only a good choice, but the only choice! Hopefully there was room and food in the inn tonight!

            We crawled out of the car with sore butts and backs feeling like we really had rode a mule all the way across the desert to Bethlehem and were eager to relax and eat

The inside of the tavern was like walking into the bar scene from Star Wars. The first Star Wars movie had been released a year earlier and, I could have sworn that we were standing exactly in the middle of that famous bar. The inside was indeed populated with dozens of strange creatures from alien planets. Who seriously goes to a bar on Christmas Eve? Not the three wise men nor the humble shepherds.

            Eventually we were directed to an empty booth. I had a hard time scooting in as the seat was sticky and so was the table top. You had to chew the air in the bar, it was so heavy with smoke of all different flavors and textures. If we both hadn’t been so hungry we would have left but this was our last chance–and we knew nothing would be open on Christmas morning.

            While we are waiting for the waitress, one of Santa’s little elves, who was flying higher than a tree top angel, came bounding over and plopped down into the booth with us. He leaned in too closely and whispered into both our faces with a breath so full of decay it could have knocked over a full-grown reindeer. 

He said, “Hey guys do you want to buy some dope? I’ll give you a real good deal for Christmas.” 

Terry and I worked hard to get good dope deals, and good arrests. Only now, on vacation, does someone plop down next to us and, with no conversation, no planning, he just asks if he can sell illegal drugs to us. Please.

            Terry looked at me with one of those can-you-believe-this eye rolls. We both had our badges and guns, but seriously? I held back an explosive laugh while Terry diplomatically said, “No thanks dude, but we appreciate the offer.”

            When he left we both laughed until I had to wipe away tears. That poor boy would never know he is the luckiest drug dealer, at least for that moment. He had just propositioned two narcs but the star shone round about him and the glory was his. He got away scot-free. 

            I don’t even remember what we ate, I just remember it was greasy. And, for the rest of the journey, my clothes reeked of grease and cigarette smoke from the lousy mangers we were swaddled in, in Las Vegas and Anaheim.

            And ah yes, Disneyland was open on Christmas Day. We felt we had the park to ourselves. We guessed that only Asians, Mid-Eastern Indians and a couple of other non-Christians were all that dared to venture out to play on Christmas day. 

Terry and I started as just friends on this sojourn, so I was rather confused when he came running back to me after being away a minute, pleading, “Quick put your arms around me and pretend we are a couple.” I did and had to ask, “Why? What’s up?” 

He explained, “Some guy just put his hand on my butt and squeezed tight. I want him to see that I am here romantically with a woman!”

We floated along in the old pirate ride, by ourselves, at least a half dozen times and I may have gotten a good kiss then. 

We had a lot to reminisce and laugh about as we rode the metal donkey back to Salt Lake City a few days later with knowing each other a lot deeper than either of us had actually planned. It was an odd but magical trip that Christmas probably because we fell in love with each other during that first comical holiday together.