Christmas Tales of Alabama (7 page)

Boo was raised on a farm owned by Bobby Baldwin, who had started his herd by purchasing six wild reindeer—including Boo—in Alaska a decade earlier. Bobby and his son, Darrel, ran the farm, taking the herd for appearances at shopping malls and holiday events. In summertime, the reindeer lived in an air-conditioned barn. Larry Holder, who assisted the Baldwins on the farm, said that the female Boo got her name because she was so skittish.

When Darrel attended an event at the Atlanta Zoo, he saw an ad in the newspaper requesting reindeer for a Christmas film. Bobby decided to take seven of his herd to the casting call. Darrel and Larry questioned his decision to take the nervous Boo, but Bobby had a feeling his girl could be a star; plus, he knew Boo would keep her antlers through the January-to-March shooting schedule in Indiana, a requirement for the lead role.

Reindeer were more like mules than deer in temperament, Bobby noted. They could be quite stubborn, not a prized quality in an actor. Boo was different. Bobby described Boo as high spirited but gentle with people and noticed that she would interact with children when they petted her at events.

The casting director was equally impressed. Boo was chosen for the role and returned to Huntsville to await filming, which began in January 1989 in LaPorte, Indiana. Boo, then fifteen years old, quickly took to acting—and to her costar, Rebecca Harrell, who played the little girl who finds the injured Prancer and nurses the reindeer to health. Veteran actors Sam Elliott, Cloris Leachman and Abe Vigoda also starred.

That winter, Indiana received record snowfall, and to play Prancer, Boo was often required to run through forested areas. Bobby wasn't worried that she would run away. Reindeer are herd animals, and after each take, Boo would instinctively return to her group of reindeer from Alabama.

Boo returned home to Alabama after filming, with most people unaware of the star in their midst. Before
Prancer
was released on November 17, 1989, Boo was invited to the premiere. Soon she was making nationwide appearances for Orion Pictures to promote the film, and newspapers were publishing stories about the now-famous reindeer. Boo took to the attention well but finally retired to the Baldwin farm in Huntsville. Although the average lifespan of a reindeer is about seventeen years, Boo lived to be twenty-two years old.

Each Christmas, Boo is fondly remembered by a new generation of children who watch
Prancer
and cheer the reindeer's recovery and escape from captivity, when he surely returned to the North Pole to help Santa pull his sleigh.

W
HEN
M
OUNTAIN
M
AN
W
ALT
C
AGLE
C
AME
TO
T
OWN

It was one week before Christmas 1935. Snow had fallen, an unusual event in the small northern Alabama town of Boaz. Still, the citizens waited.

They waited for what, for them, had become the official first sign of winter: the day Walt Cagle came from Mountainboro and lay in his winter supplies. The supplies included a pair of size seventy-two overalls and new shoes for the 562-pound Cagle. Winter of 1935 would be different. The mayor had proclaimed Walt Cagle Day in honor of the big man's abilities to forecast weather. But Walt had yet to appear.

Walt's annual trip had been delayed after his mule died, and he was unable to get to town in the mule-drawn buggy typically driven by his wife. So, on December 18, Boaz officials decided to send a firetruck the four miles across the dirt mountain road to get Walt so they could hold the trade day filled with sales, events and entertainment.

“Mounting the fire truck [
sic
], Walt rode up and down the ‘main drag' while thousands cheered,” the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reported in an Associated Press story.

Another Associated Press story reported: “When Walt finally got here today there was a fuss and to-do the like of which he'd never seen. Thousands came down from the mountain and out of the valleys to participate.”

While in town, Walt got a key to the city, enjoyed a huge fried-chicken dinner and judged the Miss Boaz and Miss North Alabama pageants. In addition, residents had purchased so many gifts for Walt that they had to be stored at Lackey and Kuykendall Warehouse. Mayor Walter Creel later presented them to Walt during the festivities. People had been anticipating Walt's visits for two decades, not only because Walt's size was impressive but also because he had become known as a forecaster of winter weather. He would tell local farmers and residents to expect a harsh or mild season, and if that weren't evidence enough, people could tell by the thickness and amount of clothes Walt bought.

Walt's weight gain began after he suffered a strange fever, called a “sleeping sickness” by locals, in 1917. The six-foot, two-inch man soon grew too large to handle his own farm. According to legend, he spent his time sitting and watching wild animals and could forecast the severity of winter based on their actions, such as how many nuts the squirrels were storing.

In the mid-1920s, Charles Shuford of the
Sand Mountain Sun
newspaper began writing about Walt's activities as a forecaster and rural philosopher. The newspaper publicized the first Walt Cagle Day, which drew an Associated Press reporter from Chattanooga. Suddenly, the fat mountain man was a star.

The AP reporter claimed Walt's weight was estimated by having him drive the wagon onto scales to weigh a load of seed and then having him step off and weighing the load without Walt.

Bill Amberson was thirteen years old that Christmas 1935. He had known Walt for many years because Bill's father's store, Amberson's Department Store, was the one that special ordered clothes for the big man. Bill recalled that Walt typically would arrive in fall to get winter supplies. Amberson's would order the oversized overalls, shirts and large heavy work shoes. Walt's long underwear, though, was hand sewn by his wife, requiring fourteen yards of flannel.

“He really drew a crowd after he would get here,” said Bill, who took over ownership of the store as an adult. “He'd take up the whole sidewalk.”

Downtown Boaz was a bustling place on Saturdays. People would park their wagons, a necessity for traversing the dirt mountain roads, and tie their mules, leaving them with a sack of corn to munch until it was time to return home. People came to spend the entire day, shopping, trading, lunching and visiting with friends.

“We'd sell as much on Saturdays as we did Monday through Friday,” Amberson recalled. After that first Walt Cagle Day celebration, when as many as five thousand people flocked to town, Boaz held the event in 1936 and 1937. In 1936, the
Times Daily
newspaper in Florence reported that Walt was greeted that year with a meal of beefsteak, buttermilk and honey.

By then, Walt had received so much media attention that he was invited to New York to appear on a radio show. Some people said he made the trip in the train's baggage car when he couldn't fit into the coach. He would earn new huge overalls by making personal appearances for the Lee jeans company. The large overalls would hang on display in stores for weeks.

Walt died in July 1938 at the age of forty-seven of a heart attack. He was buried in eighty-inch waist pants. The casket, reportedly specially made in Birmingham, was seven feet long, three feet wide and thirty-one inches high. Walt was buried in Thrasher Cemetery in Etowah County. He was survived by his wife and two grown children, a son and daughter.

These days, many but the oldest people in Boaz have forgotten big Walt Cagle. Those who knew him remember a time when neighbors would gather in town, and it didn't take more than a visit from a heavyset farmer to bring them together.

M
AY
Y
OR
D
AYS
B
E
M
ERRY AND
W
HITE

Watching Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney snuggle in red suits with white fur trim, who wouldn't dream of a white Christmas? Since the debut of the song “White Christmas”—written by Irving Berlin and recorded by Bing Crosby for the 1942
Holiday Inn
—Americans have been singing about and dreaming of snow-filled holidays. The song won an Academy Award and struck a chord during World War II with soldiers who spent Christmases far from home and often in desolate circumstances. But it was the 1954 film named for the song that solidified its reputation. Starring Crosby, Clooney, Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen, the film
White Christmas
soon became a holiday classic and made longing for snow on Christmas a popular pastime.

Somehow, when it falls on Christmas, the cold, messy slush becomes romantic, filling children with shivers of anticipation and their parents with hope and wonder. It's a rare feeling in Alabama, where the majority of residents never experienced a true white Christmas—until December 25, 2010.

The snowfall began late in the evening on December 24. Snow was falling in all but the southernmost portions of the state, promising the most Christmas Day accumulation in Alabama's history. Excited children ran to their windows upon waking, even before looking under the tree or in stockings. Snow continued to fall for much of the day, enough for residents to build on their lawns snow figures dressed in the colors of favorite football teams, the University of Alabama, which had won a national championship in 2009, and Auburn University, whose team would win the national championship just a few weeks later. The day after Christmas, crimson or blue-and-orange football jerseys were left lying on the ground, as the snow people slowly melted. The Christmas Day snow was viewed as miraculous by many.

Snow covers a nativity scene in front of First Methodist Church in downtown Athens on Christmas Day 2010.
Photograph by Tracy Fulks
.

While falling snow is slightly more common in Alabama in January and February, accumulations are not, so it was another surprise when, late on January 9, 2011, another heavy snowfall began. In northern Alabama, residents on January 10 awoke to as much as nine inches of snow on the ground. Businesses closed, and all activities halted. In Auburn, a rural south Alabama town that grew around the university, students and fans were thrilled by the rare accumulation but disappointed that plans were canceled to watch that day's championship game on huge television screens on campus.

History of White Christmases in Alabama

Although flurries and slight accumulations have occurred in northern parts of Alabama on Christmas Day, the National Climatic Data Center counts only accumulations of one inch or more as an “official” white Christmas. Even in northernmost Alabama, meteorologists say the chance of snow on Christmas is less than 5 percent in a typical year. Bing Crosby was from Spokane, Washington, where white Christmases occur 70 percent of the time.

On December 25, 2010, as much as six inches of snow accumulated in parts of northern Alabama. In central Alabama, an inch to two inches fell on Christmas Day. During the more than one hundred years of National Climatic Data Center records, 2010 marked the first true white Christmas for most of Alabama.

But officials with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Huntsville described these other snowfalls that could be categorized as “white Christmases”:

In 1963, a winter storm that began on December 22 would leave snow on the ground in some areas. What started as freezing rain turned to snow on December 23, leaving nine inches of snow on the ground in Madison, eight at Waterloo, six in Florence and nearly six in Huntsville. Temperatures remained below freezing until Christmas Day, when an inch of snow remained in Huntsville and Decatur and as much as three inches were on the ground in Muscle Shoals.

Most residents of Huntsville, northern Alabama's largest city, count 1989 as a white Christmas, although NWS officials do not. Only about one-third of an inch of snow stayed on the ground. The town of Crossville reported two inches of snow that day.

Some other Christmas records, according to the Climatic Data Center, include: