Santa and the Zabbazara Bus

By Lucrece Beale



This Christmas story ran in the local newspaper in December, 1965.  At the time, I was seven year-old, 2nd grader, living in Pueblo, Colorado.
I dug through the newspapers, and carefully pasted each episode onto notebook paper, which I have kept to this day.
Now, through the miracle of the world wide web, you may enjoy this story--rescued from the dustbin of history.

Chapter 1 - Mr. D drove the Main Street bus.
Chapter 2 - The Crocodile and the Donkey
Chapter 3 - Little Boy Lost
Chapter 4 - The Voodoo Man's Present
Chapter 5 - The Accident
Chapter 6 - The Fabulous Dunklebum
Chapter 7 - Santa Land
Chapter 8 - The Terrible Spell
Chapter 9 - A Sad Story
Chapter 10 - A Map of Dream Lands
Chapter 11 - The Golden Island
Chapter 12 - Mr. D's Plan
Chapter 13 - In Disguise
Chapter 14 - The Spell That Failed
Chapter 15 - The Voodoo Man's Secret
Chapter 16 - The X Mark
Chapter 17 - A Merry Christmas to All


UPDATE 2017:  someone has done a good job of archiving all of the author's Christmas stories -- although I only remember this one.
https://lubealesantastories.com/

For forty-six years I never knew that the author had written other Christmas stories, but a quick search revealed several more of them.
Lucrece Beale wrote for the Washington Post, and the Associated Press apparently distributed her Christmas stories.

Photo and excerpt from Sidwell Friends School page:

10/18/04  It is with great sadness that we note that Lu died on October 6, 2004.

Lucrece Hudgins was born in 1914 in Portsmouth, Virginia, where she grew up until her graduation from high school.  Because schooling in Portsmouth ended after only 11 years in those days, Lu, as she has always been called, spent an additional year at Dana Hall, in the
Boston area.  From there she won a scholarship to Wellesley College, majoring in English and graduating in 1937.

Soon after graduation, Lu gained a spot at The Boston Post as a feature writer, interviewing such diverse notables as Lady Astor, Arthur Fiedler, and Salavador Dali.  Subsequently, she learned of an opening in the New York office of the Associated Press.  It was there that she began her 27 year series of children's Christmas stories for the AP (one or two of which can now be found on the web). 

The much-awaited stories, in 17 chapters, usually revolved around the trials and tribulations of Santa in meeting his Christmas Eve deadline -- which, in the end, he always did.

In 1941 , Lu transferred to the AP Washington branch, a most fortuitous move, for it was there that she met her husband-to-be, William Beale (who died only 2 years ago at the age of 97!)  She has remained here ever since, raising two children -- David and Mary, a Sidwell alumna, now a physician specializing in pediatrics and nephrology.

A bit of internet sleuthing using the signature located the cartoonist Dick Hodgins, Jr.  The following biography is from wickipedia:

Dick Hodgins, Jr. is a cartoonist whose work includes illustration, comic strips and political cartoons. Born in Binghamton, NY, the Hodgins family moved to Queens, NY. Dick, the son of Orlando Sentinel cartoonist, Dick Hodgins, Sr., was twelve years old when a sale to the now defunct New York Mirror (payment:one dollar) spurred him to a cartoon career.

After attending the School of Visual Arts and Military Service (editing and drawing for a base newspaper in Osaka, Japan and contributing to Pacific Stars and Stripes) Hodgins returned to the educational film industry. He then joined the Associated Press illustrating feature news stories.

Hank Ketcham, creator of Dennis the Menace, selected Hodgins to draw his second comic strip "Half Hitch" for King Features Syndicate. Hodgins also created editorial cartoons for the New York Daily News. After cancellation of "Half Hitch" he took on the production of King Features iconic comic strip "Henry".

Currently, Hodgins works full-time preparing and renovating the end-product art of Dik Browne's popular comic strip "Hagar the Horrible" and continues to create editorial cartoons for several Connecticut newspapers along with the occasional advertising assignment.
A widower with two sons, Hodgins lives in Wilton, CT.
Hodgins won the National Cartoonist Society Advertising and Illustration Award for 1964 and 1966, and their Editorial Cartoon Award for 1972 and 1976.

Notes:  I scanned the original pages to 300 dpi jpg image files, using the "lineart" mode.  I then used ABBYY Finereader OCR software to convert them into MS-Word documents.  I then hand-edited these documents to correct the many errors.  Most errors were the inability of the software to recognize the column format of the original newspaper clipping (as pasted onto paper by my younger self).  However a couple of the pages scanned quite well, and I retained the original page format.  Finally, I used OpenOffice to export these files to pdf format, which reduced their size by almost half.  I created this title page using the Composer tool built into Seamonkey.