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 one. The person would cut the chosen tree, then haul it home. It wasn’t quite stealing, but very close. These unclaimed trees were always fresher and cheaper than going to a sales lot to purchase one. A friend was doing just that. His wife drove them to get an evergreen for the holiday. Once he and his axe were out of the car, she sped away with plans to return collecting him and the newly acquired tree. The friend would recognize that it was his wife when, she flashed the headlights and he would hurry back to the road with his prize, then quickly load it into the car. 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 the tied down lid. If the limbs were too large, the tree could be tied to the car’s sturdy steel roof for the short trip home.
It was cold that day and my friend 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 his wife’s return. When 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. He suddenly leaped into the roadway. Can you imagine driving along and seeing a man clad from head to foot in red at Christmas 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, our own Christmas traditions, and decorating the tree, one thing she insisted on 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 harvested had a full branched bottom. The star reached the eight foot ceiling, but there was a problem. The bottom limbs spread out more than half of the width of the trailer. All season long we had to skirt those limbs to walk through the mobile home, BUT the star brushed the ceiling.
That was the last live tree that we had. Until then, 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 to shine as bright