Adventures on the Santa Train

Santa Claus is standing on the back of a train stopped somewhere in southeastern Kentucky, throwing toys and candy to the screaming throng below. Perhaps 200 kids and adults crowd around in a flailing semicircle like frantic iron filings drawn to a magnet. They seem to consist primarily of upraised arms and straining vocal cords, with “Santa!” and “Over here!” the prime exclamations.

Four of us are helping Santa at this stop. Three are reporters, taking our turns at dispensing goodies with the Fat Man as we cover the Santa Train on its annual trip through the hills and hollows of Appalachia. The fourth is Patty Loveless, who is, according to an official press release, “Santa’s special elf.” She’s got a terrific backhand.

The putative recipients of our largesse are children, but they catch very little on the fly. They are Lilliputians in a world of NBA stars, and adults snatch the bulk of what’s tossed. Many pass the bounty on to kids; the rest, I hope, will do so once the train moves on, although a quick demographic assessment indicates there may be some adult freelancers.

One youngster has found a good spot on the periphery, and he snags several items, dropping to his knees to retrieve more from the gravel along the track. He’s clutching some candy bars, a yo-yo and a wiffle bat when a comic book hits the ground in front of him. He thinks for a second, then steps on it, anchoring it while his eyes stay resolutely on the train. Another kid, maybe 5 or so, sits on his father’s shoulders screaming Santa’s name, watching helplessly as dad, unable to maneuver, catches nothing but air. Near the front, a kid no more than 2 being held aloft like a pagan idol is busily melting down as candy and toys whiz by like bullets at Antietam. Finally, the arms holding him begin to lower, and the crowd swallows his wail.

We are at the edge of a depressed little town in the heart of coal country, and the stop will last no more than 10 minutes. Reporters and photographers work the crowd, looking for the picture or quote that will capture what’s happening here. Erudition is in short supply, but photographic opportunities abound.

The press corps has one of the train’s 11 cars, and we’ve spent most of the trip talking, taking in the scenery and wandering aimlessly. A Kingsport, Tenn., newspaper reporter who came aboard at 6:30 a.m. with a melancholy “Man, have I got a hangover,” has spent most of the morning face down on a table, silently attesting to its particularly bodacious nature. As I turn to grab another armful from a big plastic crate, I can see him shuffling toward the crowd, squinting against the strengthening sun like a hobo in a black-and-white film from the ’30s.

The Santa Train has traveled this gorgeous and desolate route from Shelby, Ky., through southwest Virginia to Kingsport since 1943. It was the brainchild of the Kingsport Merchants Bureau, which had Santa throw candy to people along this 110-mile stretch of Clinchfield Railroad track—now owned and operated by CSX Transportation—as a way of thanking those who shopped in Kingsport. Many couldn’t, as they were paid in coal company scrip redeemable only at company stores. It could be a brutal existence, and plenty of people relate how in the early days the Santa Train was all the Christmas some kids got. These days, they say, it is simply a fond tradition, a way, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, to inaugurate the Christmas season for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who first saw it roll by during World War II.

Naomi Judd, Rebecca Lynn Howard and Alison Krauss have all taken their turns as Santa’s helper, but there is perhaps no better choice for celebrity symbol of the Santa Train than Loveless, who grew up along the Clinchfield line in Elkhorn City, Ky. She was 7 when she first saw it.

“I was playing in our backyard at the house,” she says, “and I recall this train going down the track and seeing Santa waving on the back of the caboose. I thought to myself, ‘Did I really see that?’ and I wanted to run and tell everybody I saw Santa on a train, but I thought they’d think, ‘This kid is crazy.’ ”

Loveless’ coal miner father, John Ramey, epitomized the social and economic story of this hardscrabble region. “He worked at the Federal Mine, four miles into the earth,” she says, “sometimes mining coal on his knees.” That coal, which lay in thick seams below the wooded hills and hollows, made some people rich, but they were not the people who worked inside the mines and inhaled the coal dust that gave so many black lung disease, which killed Loveless’ father.