Gosh knows, Ray Pickler never did expect this.Not enough stuff for his Christmas trip to the mountains?
Why, for 16 years now people have
brought enough things to Ray’s Auto Sales and Service on CrescentRoad for Santa Claus
to deliver a real Christmas to folks so far back in the hills they needhelp all year round
— after his elves spent months, literally months, fixing toys, dressing dolls,
repairing bikes, sorting clothes.
But this year? Not this year.
He figures everybody sent
everything they could spare down East for Hurricane Floyd’s flood victims.
And he doesn’t begrudge any
help that anybody sent them. But if you don’t have shoes or a toy for your child at
Christmas or enough to eat — well, it hurts, even if other people hurt worse because
they’ve lost their homes as well.
And pain is pain, no matter why or
where people feel it.
“So we’re going,”
Ray says. “We’re going on Dec. 11 with whatever we have. It’ll be the 17th
year, and we’ve got plenty of bicycles. But that’s about all. We need canned
goods, household goods, quilts, blankets, things like that.
“Right now we probably got 10
or 12 truckloads, half of them bicycles, some toys, a few bed linens, quilts and some
clothes we’re going to take even if we said we weren’t going to take any more
clothes.”
That used to be the biggest thing.
Matter of fact, clothes really are
how his trips to the mountains got started. He’d had a yard sale and some things were
left over, and one of the guys that worked for him said he knew some people back in the
mountains so far they could hardly get out in the winter time. And they could use
anything. So Ray took those leftovers up there, and what he saw hurt his heart. He was
first-class hooked. The people could use anything Ray and his friends took and were so
grateful for anything they got.
And the caravan of Santa helpers
grew.
People heard about it and brought
more stuff, and he added a truck or two, and the next year there was more and he added
another few trucks, and people wanted to go along and — well, that’s the way it
went.
One year they had 50 trucks. One
year, 62. Last year, after they cut out clothing, they had 35 trucks that stretched into a
three-mile caravan. They cut the clothing out because J.C. Penney gives them a pickup
truck load of clothing four times a year, and they take it up to Allegheny County where
the Rev. John Yates of Antioch Baptist Church has two clothing closets.
And at Christmas, they don’t
go into the mountains and valleys and get stuck on dirt roads in bad weather. Now they
take everything to Antioch Baptist Church where people gather for their visit from Santa
Claus.
But it takes time to get things
ready and packed, so Ray’s making an appeal. If you’ve got something to send,
take it to his place by Dec. 8 or 9 “to give us a little time to work with it.”
“Whatever you’ve
got,” he adds, “we’ll take it.”
Especially toys and food and
blankets. But anything. Even clothing. |
Rose Post