No Holiday : For Some, Christmas Is Just a Very Cold Day on the Job

When Santa Claus wrapped up his gift-dispensing rounds in chilly Southern California early Friday, he sped back to the North Pole, where he would enjoy a well-deserved day of rest and relaxation similar to that planned by most San Diegans. But for a few, Christmas Day began with the alarm clock’s buzz signaling another day of work. Their jobs--at public restrooms, the weather bureau, the airport, the post office , among other places--go on 365 days a year and must be staffed no matter the day or the weather. Here’s a look at the frigid Christmas, 1987, workday--the city’s second coldest Christmas ever -- as it was for some San Diegans.

“It’s cold!” Do Hung said over and over Friday as he opened up the city’s $200,000 year-old public restroom next to the Community Concourse downtown. Hung quickly plugged in the electric heater hidden under his desk in his booth and waited for the first of a steady stream of homeless people to come by for a morning “constitutional” and to escape the 36-degree cold.

“Yeah, it was hard to get up this morning because it’s so early and so cold,” said Hung, 25, who came to San Diego 15 months ago after he and several relatives were able to leave left Vietnam. Hung works from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. five days a week monitoring the restrooms, making sure that they stay clean and remain free of illegal or obscene activity. From his booth between the bathrooms, he can buzz open the doors to the men’s or women’s facilities.

Few Give Special Greeting

For the homeless who had spent the night in a Community Concourse auditorium, opened to them because of the cold, the fact that it was Christmas Day meant less than the fact that there was a warm, clean bathroom available. Few of them gave Hung any special greeting and most ignored his presence, which is usual, he said.

“Sometimes a few will talk to you and ask me how I am or where I am from, or like ask me for change for $1 or where is City Hall or how to find the trolley, but not many people,” said Dung, whose English is quite good after only a year of English-as-a-second-language classes at an East San Diego community education center. But “a few people are no good,” he said. “They come up sometimes and just use nothing but dirty words and then run away.

“It’s a good job but sometimes boring,” he said, adding that he hopes to study auto mechanics for a career in repairing cars. “There are lots of cars in America, so you never get laid off!”

Dung periodically checks the restrooms to tidy them up. People tend to drop things on the floor and otherwise fail to keep the interior clean, he said. The facility is built to require a minimum of maintenance, though: The sinks and toilets are stainless steel, and hot-air hand dryers eliminate the need for paper towels.

Dung’s booth has a beige push-button phone and a small television. Normally, though, he would be reading a book for his class, but not on Friday.

“Today is a holiday, so I block my mind from those things!” he said, laughing.

Ed McCambridge shivered as he punched his card in the time clock at the San Diego main post office on Midway Drive. “This is the coldest Christmas I can remember!”

The 19-year postal service veteran was one of 20 delivering Christmas presents by Special Delivery or Express Mail. McCambridge came in early Friday and expected to work until 7 p.m. because there were 2,300 pieces of Express Mail to be delivered throughout the county Christmas Day.

But the reception McCambridge got at his first stop Friday made him forget the cold.

“You are a lifesaver! The post office never fails!” exclaimed Michelle Sebright as she opened the door to her apartment in the Navy’s Loma Portal housing complex. “And I’m expecting another (Express Mail) package later today!”

‘Always Late’

Sebright said her mother, who lives in Kalamazoo, Mich. (where it was 37 degrees Friday), always uses Express Mail because “we are always late in mailing things and we can depend on it.”

“I don’t mind working Christmas,” McCambridge said. “Most people are surprised and grateful for getting their (gifts), although you always get a few who tell you: ‘It’s about time. We’ve been waiting all day!”’

It was not cold in the Lindbergh Field control tower Friday morning. The winter sun streaming through the windows on the south side of the 10-sided, 150-foot-high cab was strong enough that controllers required transparent green shades to watch the runway and terminal areas without beads of sweat forming on their brows.

“This is the slowest day of the year,” said Richard D. Harden, the controller in charge, as he referred to a list of Christmas Day flights canceled because there were too few passengers. By mid-morning, the number of arrivals and departures totaled 25, substantially below the normal number

for a weekday.

Controller Greg Rising noted that most planes were taking off without traveling far down the runway and were rising at a steep angle, both signs of light passenger loads. His radar screen showed no more than half a dozen planes aloft in the San Diego metropolitan area.

Lone Sightseer

Despite the cold, he said, a woman in a Piper Cherokee was sightseeing up and down the coast--probably because this was one day she could have the airspace to herself.

Only a few staccato “Merry Christmas” salutations between controllers and pilots gave any direct indication of the holiday.

“Last night all the pilots were saying ‘Happy Holidays’ and everything,” controller Don Ashley said, “but today it’s more ‘Grrr,’ I guess because they don’t want to be working either.”

Manager Ramon Bautista had scheduled a crew of 25 for Friday at the Jack in The Box downtown to handle the long lines of military personnel, homeless people and others who would be looking for a meal out of the cold. Tony hotel restaurants were open, but the Jack in The Box was about the only alternative for anyone wanting to eat inexpensively downtown.

“We’re the only place open within miles, but that’s the way it’s always been downtown on Christmas Day,” Bautista said. Charley Remond of Detroit was among a group of Navy personnel there who wished they could be at home this Christmas.

Customers were ordering the usual tacos, hamburgers, sodas and other “junk” food. “We don’t offer anything special for Christmas, and for most people here, it’s just another day,” Bautista said.

1st Christmas in San Diego

It was counter worker Joseph Elias’ first Christmas in San Diego. He moved here six months ago from a Dallas suburb to attend college.

“I spent Christmas Eve in my apartment thinking about all the previous Christmases with my family,” Elias said. Elias said he planned to have dinner with his sister and her family later in the day.

“But I enjoy working here,” he said. “I like seeing all the sorts of people who come here,” he said.

Wilbur Shigehara, the U.S. Weather Service’s chief meteorologist for San Diego, protested good-naturedly Friday that he only predicts the weather, he doesn’t produce it.

Shigehara and colleague Richard Stitt were busier than usual for a Christmas Day at the weather service office at Lindbergh Field because the near-record cold meant extra work--especially in issuing frost advisories for agricultural growers--and extra attention from the public.

The low Friday morning was 34, the second-coldest on a Christmas Day ever in the city. The record is 32, set in 1879. Friday’s low was also the coldest in San Diego in nine years, since Dec. 8, 1978, when the mercury also fell to 34.

Friday’s high was just 53 degrees, the second-lowest high ever for Dec. 25. A high of 52 degrees was recorded in 1916. The mean temperature Friday was 44, far below the normal mean of 57. (To get the mean, the high and low temperatures are added and the sum is divided by 2.)

The coldest spot in the county was Mt. Laguna, with a low of 9 degrees. Other lows in the county Friday were 15 degrees, at Campo; 23 degrees, at Valley Center; 30, at La Mesa; 28, at Imperial Beach and Chula Vista, and 31, at El Cajon.

Freeze Warnings Still On

Shigehara predicted that freeze warnings for inland agricultural areas will continue through tonight, although daytime temperatures will be slightly warmer, with highs of 55 predicted for today and 60 for Sunday. A low of 31--which would be a record for the date--was predicted for this morning. Lows should be in the mid-30s early Sunday, he said.

Area skies will be mostly clear through the weekend, but a chance of rain will develop by Tuesday, he said. The snow level is predicted at 6,000 feet.

“We’ve had a lot of work to do,” Shigehara said. “The word this Christmas has been cold!”