PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
PORT ANGELES — When jolly ol’ St. Nick rounded the corner in his twinkling log truck Saturday evening, the sight of his red suit and white beard made a believer out of at least one person in the crowd.
“Look at that! He’s real!” shouted a young girl, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail.
She ran down Laurel Street to get a better glimpse.
The annual arrival of Santa Claus brought forth cheers and applause — and some chants of “Santa” — from the hundreds of people who gathered in the clear, crisp air on a closed-off block of Laurel Street across from Conrad Dyar Memorial Fountain on First Street.
The popular guy in red, portrayed by John Hubbard, had a two-pronged job — to listen to the wishes of little boys and girls, and to switch on the lights of a 40-foot-tall Douglas fir perched in front of the fountain.
Free cocoa and cookies
By 4 p.m., an hour earlier than Santa would arrive, many people were clustered on Laurel, bundled for the cold and sipping cups of coffee or hot chocolate or nibbling on cookies, all provided for free by the Port Angeles Downtown Association.
Singers with Port Angeles High School Vocal Unlimited and Sunshine Generation serenaded the crowd with music, while emcee Amanda Bacon built the suspense with each cell phone call she placed to Santa.
“This is great,” said John Boyd of Port Angeles, who held his 2½-year-old daughter, Alisyn, clad in fuzzy ear warmers, in his arms.
“I’ve been coming here for years.”
At 5, a Singhose Logging truck wrapped in lights and holding Santa and his elves drove slowly past the stage, with bobbing-head lighted reindeer following about five cars behind.
Once they were parked, the elves led Santa through the crowd to the stage, where he and those gathered to see him counted down from 10.
When they hit one, the tree was bathed in 15,000 colored lights and Bacon shouted, “Merry Christmas!”
