A Vespa and a beard
The city's Santa Claus, Ray Scott

By Judah Pollack
HippoPress.com

What does Santa Claus ride in the summer?

In Manchester, he trades in his sleigh for a red Vespa scooter, license plate #247. That's what Ray Scott rides, anyway. At 6 feet and 3 inches, 300 pounds and adorned with a full, white beard, he's the spitting image of the jolly man of the North Pole.

Children walk up to him wide-eyed and slack-jawed.
"Are you Santa?" they ask.

"Do you think I'm Santa Claus?" he asks in return.

The children nod. He winks. At Christmas time, he hands them a candy cane and they walk away saying, "I know that's Santa."

The daughter of a waitress at the restaurant Chez Vachon once told her first grade class, "Santa has breakfast at my Mommy's restaurant."

Scott has eaten breakfast there for the last 20 years. He and a group of eight to 10 regulars gather at the restaurant on Kelley Street on the West Side to discuss everything from politics to gun control to the Fish and Game Commission.

The group is diverse, consisting of attorneys, mechanics, painters, insurance investigators and a salesman. That's Scott. At 60, he looks perfectly his age.

He possesses a fervent, uniquely American belief in his right to participate in democracy. And Santa Claus is mad. "I'm a little taken aback by the way the aldermen and the mayor are spending money like drunken sailors. They are not showing due respect to the taxpayers. Let's renovate a stadium. It's absurd. Over $20 million for a minor league baseball stadium for a team that may only stay a year. Don't misunderstand; I love baseball. But the taxpayers did not have a voice."

Scott grew up in Manchester and graduated early from Bishop Bradley High School (now Trinity). He tried Saint Anselm College for a year. But academia was too still for him so, at 17, he joined the Navy. This was in 1961. One of the places he was stationed was Key West.

"It was paradise. Just a pair of shorts, flip-flops and no shirt. I have never been that carefree in my life."

It was a seminal time in his life. He could choose a career in the Navy, stay in Key West and try business, or come back home and go to school. A good friend of his sent him an application for St. A's and he decided to come back to school. He wanted to be a lawyer. He loved philosophy and the teachers but the allure of the world was too much.

"I'm not proud of it," he says. "But I had tasted the real world and wanted to earn money."

He worked as a bartender at the Wayfarer Inn and sold hearing aids door to door just to prove he could sell. He worked his way up, eventually selling ventilation for the Broan Company and then AirCare Industries. For a long while his territory stretched from Maine to Florida and Texas to Michigan. He spent much of his time on airplanes.

"It was a terrible thing being alone at night. It's terrible eating dinner alone."

His wife, Pat, saw him through those times. They've been married nearly 30 years and had three children. Scott beams when he speaks of them.

"My oldest started his own business, a true entrepreneur, and my youngest son joined him. My daughter, she's the middle one, works for a huge corporation and she's sharp. She'll be the first female president if Hillary isn't."

Today Scott has his own business, Sunrise Sales.

"I'll buy or sell anything of value," he says. But his true passion lies in fly fishing. He defines its difference from regular fishing by saying fly fishing is fooling a fish, not feeding one. He loves to tie his own flies and learn techniques from other enthusiasts.

"It's an association of men who love the same thing. I never met a fly fisherman I didn't like."

He shows off his scooter standing by the curb. It's a common sight on the West Side. There is a plastic figure of Piglet attached to the handlebars.

"Everyone else is riding their hogs, so I have my piglet," he says.

He happily shows a couple of Harley riders the novelty of his electric start button.

The scooter is a little bit of Key West for Ray Scott. A simple piece of underpowered joy. He grew his beard after leaving the corporate world because Ernest Hemingway, a doyen of Key West, once said that every man deserves to know what he looks like with a beard. Now he has children who throw themselves into his arms, kiss his cheek and say, "I love you Santa."

Judah Pollack can be reached at: hippo@hippopress.com