美国国家公共电台 NPR NORAD's Santa Tracker Began With A Typo And A Good Sport

 

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: 

Time now for StoryCorps. This Christmas Eve, people all over the world will log on to the official Santa Tracker to follow his progress on U.S. military radar¹. The tradition started in 1955 thanks to a misprint in a Colorado Springs newspaper that led to a telephone call to Colonel Harry² Shoup. He was manning the secret hotline at the Continental³ Air Defense⁴ Command, now known as NORAD. Colonel Shoup's children, Terri, Rick and Pam, talked about what happened for StoryCorps.

TERRI VAN KEUREN: I remember two phones on his desk. One was this red phone. Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number.

COLONEL HARRY SHOUP: This was the '50s. This was the Cold War. And he would've been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States.

PAMELA FARRELL: So first couple weeks of December in 1955, dad was at the office, and the red phone rang. He answered it. This Colonel Shoup. And then there was a small voice that just asked, is this Santa Claus?

SHOUP: Dad was very straight-laced, very disciplined.

KEUREN: He was annoyed.

FARRELL: He was upset.

SHOUP: He thought it was a joke.

KEUREN: And so now the little voice is crying.

FARRELL: And dad realized that it wasn't a joke. So he'd talk to him, ho-ho-hoed and asked if he had been a good boy and may I talk to your mother? And the mother got on and said, you haven't seen the paper yet? There's a phone number to call Santa. It's in the Sears ad. Dad looked it up, and there it was - his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another. So he put a couple airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus.

KEUREN: It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, the old man's really flipped⁵ his lid this time. We're answering Santa calls.

FARRELL: The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada. And when airplanes would come in, they would track them.

SHOUP: And Christmas Eve of 1955, when dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer⁶ coming over the North Pole.

KEUREN: Dad said, what is that? They said, Colonel, we're sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down? Dad looked at it for a while. And next thing you know, dad had called the radio station and had said, this is the commander of the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh. Well, the radio stations would call him, like, every hour and say, where's Santa now? And later in life, he got letters from all over the world - people saying thank you, Colonel, for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase⁷ that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information. You know, he was an important guy. But this is the thing he's known for.

SHOUP: It's probably the thing he was proudest of, too.

KEUREN: Oh, I'm sure it was, yeah.

MONTAGNE: That's Terri Van Keuren with her siblings⁸ Richard Shoup and Pamela Farrell. They remembered their dad, Colonel Harry Shoup, at StoryCorps in Castle Rock, Colorado. Their conversation will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. And you can track Santa at noradsanta.org.

1 radar   

n.雷达，无线电探测器

参考例句：

• They are following the flight of an aircraft by radar.他们正在用雷达追踪一架飞机的飞行。
• Enemy ships were detected on the radar.敌舰的影像已显现在雷达上。

2 harry   

vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼

参考例句：

• Today,people feel more hurried and harried.今天，人们感到更加忙碌和苦恼。
• Obama harried business by Healthcare Reform plan.奥巴马用医改掠夺了商界。

3 continental   

adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的

参考例句：

• A continental climate is different from an insular one.大陆性气候不同于岛屿气候。
• The most ancient parts of the continental crust are 4000 million years old.大陆地壳最古老的部分有40亿年历史。

4 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

5 flipped   

轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥

参考例句：

• The plane flipped and crashed. 飞机猛地翻转，撞毁了。
• The carter flipped at the horse with his whip. 赶大车的人扬鞭朝着马轻轻地抽打。

6 reindeer   

n.驯鹿

参考例句：

• The herd of reindeer was being trailed by a pack of wolves.那群驯鹿被一只狼群寻踪追赶上来。
• The life of the Reindeer men was a frontier life.驯鹿时代人的生活是一种边区生活。

7 briefcase   

n.手提箱，公事皮包

参考例句：

• He packed a briefcase with what might be required.他把所有可能需要的东西都装进公文包。
• He requested the old man to look after the briefcase.他请求那位老人照看这个公事包。

8 siblings   

n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分