So there I was, standing inside the covered entrance of Howsers IGA, wearing a borrowed Santa’s cap, red apron and jingly bracelet on my wrist. There was a red kettle by my side.

A gray-haired woman passed with an armload of groceries. I gave her a solicitous smile. She slipped a five-dollar-bill into the kettle.

“Wow, thank you!” I gave her two mini candy canes.

“No, thank you,” she responded, “for volunteering for such a good cause.”

I beamed. Until the man in the trucker’s cap and Xtratufs appeared. I wished him a Merry Christmas in a sing-songy voice.

“I don’t want to hear that word,” he said. “Ho humbug!”

You take the good with the bad here on the front lines of the holiday season.

You see them everywhere around Christmas: the cold and runny-nosed, ringing their Salvation Army bells in the worst kind of weather. Many aren’t given much notice; the idea is that, like with a schizophrenic on the street, if you look at them, then you have to deal with them.

Down in the Lower 48, I have been an offender – often too busy and, yes, I’ll admit, too cheap.

In Haines, things are different. I wanted in on the action because I’m somewhat of an anomaly here: a winter visitor who has stuck around – an outsider curious what it feels like on the inside. So I called Lt. Kevin Woods and signed up for a four-hour shift as a Salvation Army bell-ringer.

I met Kevin at 10 a.m. It’s easy work, he said. Like being a Walmart greeter dressed in red.

You don’t stand out in the cold, but inside, where it’s warm. Kevin has manned kettles around the country. The work has helped save him. He showed me a picture of himself as a prison inmate, back when he stole things to support a meth and heroin habit.

No more taking. Now Kevin’s a giver.

Usually, there are two volunteer ringers, but not today.

“So, I’m alone?”

“You can handle that,” he said. “You aren’t a-feared, are ya?”

As we talked, a bearded fellow passed. “He’s taking the whole day,” he teased.

“And you’re taking the next day, right?” Kevin shot back.

“Call me after New Year.”

There were apparently a few rules to this kettle business. It wasn’t to shake my wrist chimes non-stop, only when shoppers passed, because it got on the nerves of the checkout clerks. And I was warned to stay away from the little bell entirely; that drove people ballistic.

Kevin said that was pretty normal, and at a store someplace south, the bell-ringer went bell-less: He was given a piece of cardboard with the word “Ding!” written on one side, and “Dong!” on the other.

My job was to smile, make eye contact and never actually solicit money. Don’t even mention the kettle, Kevin said. Let it speak for itself. “If you don’t know a Salvation Army kettle by now,” he said, “you’ve been living under a rock somewhere.”

The plastic kettle also came with a lock. There have been thefts in other places, but never in Haines, he said. That’s just the way the kettles came.

There were more gentle instructions: Don’t offer a candy cane to every kid; check with the adult first. Because if they take one their mother doesn’t want them to have, there’ll be trouble, some very un-holiday-like tears. And another thing: I was to stand off to the side and not get in people’s way.

And then Kevin was gone. I was alone. I glanced at my watch, causing the chimes to ring. It must be almost 11 by now.

It was 10:08 a.m. Time began its crawl toward 2 p.m.

I’d let my beard go a couple of days, hoping an unruly look would appeal to burly fisherman types. A few passed without giving me a second look. A kid in a black hooded sweatshirt with the phrase “Think snow” passed and I said hello. He nodded back. The beard must be working, I thought.

As time passed, I noticed things. One toddler wanted to take a toy out of the donation box, as his mother explained that those were for children less fortunate. And nearby, at the holiday table stocked with free food, a kid kept appearing, refilling his plate.

And a mother trustingly left her 4-year-old son on the bench near the front door, with a plate of food, as she shopped inside. That just would not happen outside a small town, I thought.

I saw wealthy-looking people pass, and those who looked a bit more down and out. I quickly devised a friendliness meter: Some were so warm the thing was off the charts. Others passed with an underfed New England smile. Some said nothing at all.

Pretty soon, even I got bored with Merry Christmas. So, like a would-be comedian, I tried out a few lines to see if they flew. “Go straight home” and “Stay out of trouble” got some laughs.

Then a woman one-upped me.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” I said. “Or as they used to say in my neighborhood, ‘Yo! Yo! Yo!’”

“We all used to say that in the old days,” she said. “Now we’re all just yo-yos.”

An elderly woman took one look at me and with a gracious smile, said, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” Indeed; the snow outside was blowing sideways.

By 1:45 p.m., this one-man army was looking for salvation: his replacement.

Kevin came by and I proudly announced that I’d collected maybe $20. (He later told me it was more like $35.)

He smiled. In an eight-hour shift in Haines, he’d garnered $500.

“I work it,” he said. And if he can’t fill volunteer holiday shifts, he works them himself.

I went home feeling somewhat of an imposter in my Santa hat.

Because Lt. Kevin Woods is the real Santa Claus in this town.

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