A childhood belief about father christmas

One year, when I was a kid and still believed in Santa, it was a cold but snowless Christmas Eve in Chicago and I wanted to wait for Santa to show up. I didn't go to bed as I was supposed to but instead waited and waited and kept on looking out my frosted bedroom window. All of a sudden my Dads car pulls up in front of our house. My Dad gets out of the car and then, lo and behold who gets out of the passenger side but none other than ole Saint Nick ( my Dads slightly lubed buddy dressed like Santa) himself. They open the trunk and remove a bag of presents and walk up to the house. I'm excited as all get up but my young mind is thinking...hey..what's up with this?

Well they come in through the front door and to their surprise ( their plan was for Dad was to slip into bed with Mom and then Santa was to make some racket to awaken us ) I'm already at the bottom of the stairs yelling out at the top of my lungs "Santa Clause is here" which then woke everybody else in my family up.

Well after Santa gave us our presents, the wheels in my young head started turning again and I looked at my Dad and asked...Daddy, why was Santa in your car and where is his sleigh and reindeers???

My Dad was stumped but Santa, with a glass of eggnog in his hand, looked at me, paused and then said "Johnny, as you can see, there's no snow on the ground or up on your roof for my sleigh to land on... so I called your father and he picked me up at O'Hare airport.

That made perfect sense to me!