Tree-mendous Christmas Memories

There was a time in history when a person could go out into a grove where pine trees grew wild and harvest on. The person would cut the chosen tree, then take it home. It wasn’t quite stealing, but close, very close. The unclaimed trees were always fresher and much cheaper than going to a sales lot to purchase one. A friend was doing just that. He was accompanied by his wife to get an evergreen tree for the holiday. Once he and his axe were out of the car, she drove away with plans to return later and collect him and the newly acquired tree. So the friend would recognize that it was his wife, she planned to flash the headlights and he would hurry back to the road with his prize and quickly load it into the car.

The trunks of cars were larger back then and unless the tree was huge, it would fit in the car’s trunk with only the tip of the pine peeking out from a tied down lid. If the limbs were too large, the tree could be tied to the car’s sturdy steel roof for the short transport back to their home.
            It was cold that winter’s day and the man was warmly dressed in his red and black Woolrich pants, coat, and hat. Thick Woolrich clothing was the accepted winter and hunting clothing of that time period. Having cut the tree, he squatted on a bank above the road to watch for the return of his wife. When the headlights of an oncoming car flashed, he hopped down onto the roadway only to find that it wasn't his wife. The oncoming car had rolled over a bump in the road and the headlights only appeared to flash. He told me that the surprise on the driver's face was stupendous. When he suddenly leaped into the roadway, can you imagine driving along and seeing a man clad from head to foot in red at Christmastime, carrying an evergreen tree in one hand and an axe in the other unexpectedly hop into view?

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When my wife Cindy and I started our own home and our own tradition of Christmas and decorating the tree, one thing she insisted upon was that the tree was live and the star topper had to touch the ceiling of our mobile home. Our mobile home had a vaulted roof in the living room in front of the windows. One of the live trees I brought home had a full branched bottom and the star reached the eight foot ceiling. But there was a problem with the tree. The bottom limbs spread out over more than half of the width of the trailer. All season long while the tree was up, we had to skirt those limbs to move through the mobile home, but the star brushed the ceiling.

That was the last live tree that we had. Until that point, my uncle Ted and I went together to cut Christmas trees; one for Grandma Rebecca Miner and one for Cindy and me. When he died, Christmas wasn’t the same. I no longer had the desire to drive to the grove of pines and cut a tree. That was the year we bought an artificial tree. The star touched the ceiling, but it somehow it didn’t seem as bright.