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Show Santa's Village LJUW'D you like to go to the North Pole, and see Santa Claus? All his eight reindeer from Dasher to Blitzen? ' His house and furniture, his toyshops with bearded beard-ed gnomes in aprons and tasseled caps? His private mailbox in an official United States post office? How'd you like to see story books come to life? Bo Peep leading lead-ing her flock, and Huck Finn with his burro? Mother Hubbard with a full cupboard of goodies? The house of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe? A Lollipop Tree with candy hanging from the branches ready to pluck and eat? You can find all this in a new children's village in the Adirondack Adiron-dack Mountains, not far from Lake Placid, N. Y. The entrance is an arched gate, with hand-carved sleigh and reindeer prancing atop it, and a sign reading: "Santa's Workshop The North Pole." Ponies Po-nies take you on a cart ride to the top of a hill. Looking down, you see Santa's village eight cabins with steep red-and-blue roofs around a brook, a water wheel, and a pond. At the foot of the hill you And two ways to enter the village. One is to walk down steps that's for grownups. The other is for kids a long, long slide that drops you right in front of Santa's own cottage. From there on you're in fairyland! QHILDREN visiting "Santa's Workshop" always ask the same question: Why did he move from the top of the world and settle 3own here? "Well," explains Santa, "one Christmas I had to stop right here for repairs to my harness. It was such a lovely little valley, I kind of got the notion it would be nice to live here wouldn't have to travel back and forth so far every year. My gnomes liked the idea, too, and so we all moved down here the next week." That's how Santa tells it, with a roguish twinkle in his eye, to fascinated fas-cinated youngsters. But here's the way it really happened: Little Patricia Reiss, after a Christmas visit to New York City, was riding home in her father's car. She looked at the store win dows, with figures of Santa and his workers. She thought of all the Santas she'd talked to in department depart-ment stores, on street corners. "Daddy," she wanted to know, "why can't we go see Santa Claus where he really lives? You know, at the North Pole. Not just at Christmas, but any time?" gACK home at Lake Placid, Mr. Reiss mentioned the idea to Mr. Fortune. "That would take piles of money," mon-ey," said Mr. Fortune. "So what?" replied Mr. Reiss "I've made plenty from my automobile auto-mobile business. I'd like to do something big for all the kids, not just my own. If I financed it, would you be interested?" Mr. Fortune was quite interested. interest-ed. His own childhood had been pretty tough. The son of a stagecoach stage-coach driver, he had to leave school in the seventh grade and go to work as a stable boy Gradually Grad-ually he rose to be a riding teacher, a sports director, and manager ot country clubs. Meanwhile ne'e! gone to night school to finish his education. In the war he trained horses and riders for the United States Cavalry. A back injury put him out of service. Now he was in the contracting and real estate business. "Reiss," he said, "you know that land I bought on Whiteface Mountain, Moun-tain, near the big skiing center? About 14 acres, right on the main highway. You can have it for your Santa's village if you let me come in with you as a partner!" Mr. Reiss gladly accepted. Now they had money and land. But they needed someone to plan the village landscape, houses, furniture, furni-ture, costumes, and so on. "Some fellow's started a toy factory fac-tory over in the next town," said Mr. Fortune. "Been to Hollywood and all, they say. Let's go over and see him!" V Arto Monaco wasn't -just an artist. art-ist. He'd worked on cartoon comedies com-edies in the movies. He'd designed de-signed homes for movie stars. In the Army, he'd even built an imitation imi-tation German village for troop practice for our invasion of Germany. Ger-many. He'd also designed many original toys. He jumped at the chance to join the partnership. |