A whole batch o' memories were just seriously jostled loose when I came across the above photo on the 'net. It's of a little place called Santa Claus Lane that used to be along the west side of the 101 freeway between Santa Barbara and Carpinteria. It was kind of like a strip mall before I ever heard anyone use that term. Basically, it was a cluster of several small Santa-themed businesses side-by-side with a nice parking lot out front. If you were driving down the 101, especially when heading south, it was an easy place to pull into, use a bathroom, buy some snacks and/or sodas or mail letters.
Mailing letters was a big thing at Santa Claus Lane because they had a tiny post office and its postmark was "Santa Claus, CA." An awful lot of people would travel there just to mail out their Christmas cards with that stamped on them. It was always Christmas at Santa Claus Lane, 365 days a year, especially with that huge Santa figure you see in the photo setting the tone of the mall.
It's been a good half-century since I was there and I don't recall how many stores there were. In addition to the post office, there was a restaurant called Santa's Kitchen and at some point, it added on a bar called The Reindeer Room where, I guess, you were guaranteed to leave with a shiny nose. There was a pottery shop and toy store and a juice bar. The juice bar specialized in "date shakes" and also sold fruit you might give or send as a gift to someone…but mostly dates.
Somewhere in there, there were places you could purchase snacks and sodas and souvenirs of Santa Claus Lane. They sold a lot of postcards of the place and I found a few online with I'm using to illustrate this series of articles. Here's one now…
There was also a little toy train which a very, very small child (smaller than I) might possibly have been able to ride around on a small track that encircled the property. That was if the train was working, which every time I was there, it was not. And there was also usually some guy on the premises in a shopworn Santa suit, wandering around posing for photos and, you could kinda tell, contemplating the career path that had brought him to that exalted, surely high-paying position.
In the sixties, my parents and I sometimes took vacations to the north…up to Carmel and/or Monterey and/or San Francisco. We passed Santa Claus Lane on the way up and the way back and we'd stop on the way up or the way back or both. We also stopped at Pea Soup Andersen's, a great restaurant that I wrote about back here. Don't hold me to this but I believe it was about fifty miles north of Santa Claus Lane on the 101.
I basically remember us stopping at Santa Claus Lane so I could use the bathroom and…well, from that time period, about all I recall is us stopping and me using the bathroom. I think we bought some snacks or drinks just to legitimize our use of the bathrooms.
But I also remember being there without my parents in the seventies…several times. There was a period when every few months, I would drive up there — often but not always with a carload of friends — to visit at least two of three people, all of whom were supremely talented. One was Dan Spiegle, one was Carl Barks and one was Russell Myers. I'll tell you about those visits in Parts 2, 3 and 4 of all this memory-jogging.
And we'll discuss what became of Santa Claus Lane, which (sadly) ain't there no mo'. The Big Santa, thankfully, has survived and I have a hunch the guy in the ratty Santa costume is still wandering around on the property like a Japanese soldier who was never told the war was over.