Dirty Digs for Your Unfavorites : A New Gift Idea From the House of Humbug

Tucked in the back room of Don’s Baseball Card store, past racks of rainbow-hued comics and a coveted 1964 Pete Rose card under glass, lurks the dark side of Christmas.

For $9.95, Don Dubovsky will send a 2-pound lump of cheerless, black coal to whomever you despise. Best of all, Dial-a-Lump, not your name, is the return address.

Dubovsky has clearly tapped into a rich vein of cynical Christmas spirit. Since he started Gift-Wrapped Revenge only a week ago in this small town 40 miles south of San Jose, he has shipped nearly 200 boxes, some as far away as Alaska, Connecticut and Australia.

Plenty of Demand

“It’s been berserk,” he said. “There’s a lot of wackos out there.”

The idea bubbled into his brain late one night coming home from his second job as a Santa Clara County bus driver. Years before he had sent a lump of coal to his brother, who never stopped talking about it.

A man with a keen eye for the bizarre--”Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters” are his shop’s best-selling new comic titles--Dubovsky said he’d had crazy ideas like this before, but “lacked the nerve to go through with it.”

After a lot of calls around town, Dubovsky reached a place that carried enough coal to supply his scheme. For 10 cents a pound, the Carnation Country Store dropped off 800 pounds “of their best” coal, Dubovsky said. “I cleaned them out. I just hope some poor schnook isn’t freezing to death.”

He also set up a toll-free telephone number: 800-334-LUMP.

Comes in a Box

Dubovsky keeps the coal in 100-pound sacks in the back of his shop. In between orders, he chisels off chunks with a screwdriver. For shipment, he puts the chunks in a handsomely packaged box along with a sneering poem signed by “One of Santa’s Other Elves.”

So far Dubovsky has shipped lumps to a boss from the staff he had just fired, one to a police officer from a con who skipped bail and another to an investment banking firm involved in Wall Street’s recent insider trading scam from a disgruntled stockholder.

Needless to say, not every recipient is delighted with his lump. “One man called and said he was going to report us to the Better Business Bureau,” Dubovsky said. “ ‘Well it got there!’ ” I told him. The guy probably deserved it from the way he talked on the phone.”

All Purchases Prepaid

Dubovsky hasn’t yet shipped a lump C.O.D. “Have somebody pay to get lumped?” he asked. “That wouldn’t be nice.”

There is someone Dubovsky would love to lump. “I’ve been trying to get the address of that priest in New Jersey who told the kids there wasn’t a Santa Claus,” he said, a string of Christmas lights twinkling behind him.

“That lump would be on the house.”