In July, I wrote a piece called “Stop the Train! Was that a Rocket Ship?!”, in which I speculated fruitlessly about the origin of a mysterious object, with a galactic if forlorn air, spotted in a Wisconsin field from a speeding Amtrak train. What was that thing?
You, readers, were intrigued. Many of you apparently leapt to your laptops, eyes flashing, brows furrowed.
First in was reader ES, an apparent wordsmith. She noted the missing letters (Wheel of Fortune-style?) and emailed me… “In looking more closely at the rocket in your picture… SAN A SUPER RO KET…made me think Santa’s Super Rocket. Google it!”
Kudos to ES, JG, DW, JK, and more. We all went down the garden path together.
In the fifties, a time when rockets and jets captured the public imagination, one enterprising Lloyd Laster of Texas dolled up a commercial bus with portholes, red paint, and staffed it with a driver, a couple of leggy elves, and Santa himself. At shopping malls and civic events, the eventual fleet of five vehicles welcomed children aboard. There was a special intercom system that would allow Santa to phone the kids’ Christmas gift requests straight to the North Pole, plus its own power plant for flashing Christmas lights and music. The rides lasted about fifteen minutes, sometimes apparently around the edges of mall parking lots.
I’ve seen photos of the Rocket Bus and its variants over the next two decades, from all over the south and southwest. After Laster retired, the fleet was sold off to Wisconsin. One ended up in a junkyard, one went to an Alaskan roadside attraction. One still stands, forsaken, by the Amtrak line near Columbus, Wisconsin, where it caught my attention.
Special recognition to one reader who, instead of googling, used an image search of my inexpert photo and sent me the results, remarking “Peg, you are now the expert on this phenomenon.” Designated so by AI, and heaven help me. AI was wrong from top to bottom: “This image features the fuselage of a large aircraft, possibly a Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter or a similar large transport plane, which has been repurposed or is in a state of disrepair in a field.” And, unnervingly, it goes on to say “The text overlay “Motley Peg: a series of small essays” suggests this image is a visual element associated with a written work by an author named Peg Guilfoyle. The visible text “SAMA SUPER ROU” on the fuselage might be a partial or faded original marking from its operational life.”
What?
Now I don’t believe that reference makes me an expert, and again, heaven help us all. But, while waiting for that help, let’s enjoy the vision of Santa’s Super Rocket, sleek and shiny and red, full of children thinking to fly to the moon, calling in their requests direct to the North Pole, attended by Santa himself and his ‘space hostess’. I’m cancelling an exploratory field trip I’d thought of to Wisconsin. I don’t think I want to trudge through that field. Now that I know what it is, or was, the abandoned rocket bus seems sad to me, full of the echoes of children, who are elders now, or gone. Their lives, though, did include a moment in Santa’s Super Rocket, even if it was only circling a shopping center parking lot. I hope they were excited and laughing, and I hope they got all their wishes.
And I hope we all do, too. Happy holiday season to one and all.
* * *
Santa photo: Unseen Histories | Unsplash
Holiday Shopping Photo: New York Public Library | Unsplash
More Motley Peg
