Oh, poo: Not any ol' gift will do

So you decide that talking to a few people around the area about Christmas presents might provide a nice, lighthearted column.

And then you discover there’s way more response than you expected, not to mention some really great stories.

What to do?

Simple.

One column becomes two.

The premise this time was a question: What’s the most unusual or fun Christmas gift you ever received?

I had the thought because my mother hated getting anything practical. One December, she’d badgered my dad, my sister and me: “Don’t buy me a doggone kitchen appliance. Find something I don’t need.”

Each Christmas after that, it was almost a contest to see who could come up with the most outrageous thing — or put some everyday item into a package that thoroughly disguised it.

THINKING about Christmas at home made me wonder if my North Idaho neighbors have experienced some of the same enjoyment.

Recall, now, that we just were talking about how you pack and wrap those gifts, and that sometimes there’s a surprise.

Steve Griffitts, hizzoner the mayor of Hayden, offered up a memory that fit that description to a tee.

Pun intended.

“My dad was a golf pro,” Griffitts said, “and he knew that I needed a set of irons.

“You know that usually the cobbler’s children don’t get any shoes? The golf pro’s son doesn’t have a set of irons.

“So eventually, I got good enough (to use first-class irons) and the box was the perfect box for golf irons — except that Dad had taken out the irons and replaced them with a pair of shoes.

“He thought that was the funniest thing.”

My first thought when I heard Steve’s story was he should have gone and found a barefoot cobbler’s son — who probably got a set of irons for Christmas.

I’m kidding, gang.

On the other hand, Steve likely wouldn’t have wanted to swap with local Democratic boss Paula Neils, whose top Christmas memory was getting a load of manure.

OK, it was fertilizer for her garden and she was really pleased, but let’s not spoil our search for a decent punchline.

Manure from Brent Regan, maybe?

I’M STILL laughing, by the way, at a Christmas mishap that bugged state Rep. Vito Barbieri’s family for quite some time.

“In the spring several years ago,” Barbieri said, “there were intermittent sounds coming from the mud room in the evening after we settled down for dinner.

“For weeks, we couldn’t track down the source because the sound always ceased too soon.

“Then summer found us cleaning out the closet in the mud room. There in the back, still in their gift bag, were those toy gremlins that talk to each other — apparently without any prompting whatsoever.

“They were a Christmas ‘white elephant’ gift, and we hadn’t given them any thought. Who thinks of those toys?

“It could have driven us mad!”

Right, we’ll leave today with a mental picture of Vito thumbing through the phone book for a therapist — and move along to more of this fun in Saturday’s column.

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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press. Follow A Brand New Day at facebook.com/BrandNewDayCDAPress. Email: [email protected]