The almost finished tree at bottom of this post.
Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
On this frosty Thursday morning of December the second, I drove into town to do some grocery shopping. On the way back home I went by a Christmas tree farm off Yukon Road that I have used in the past to obtain our trees for Christmas. No one was there but I decided, after reading the sign on the garage door to take saw in hand and "cut the tree of your choice and leave a check for the correct amount in the white plastic bucket hanging underneath this sign." It was noted that the prices were determined by the height of the tree, five dollars per foot of height. I proceeded to look around for the "perfect tree" and saw no immediate sign of it. All the trees seemed very large or very small. A tall thin tree was what I had in mind. From the distance I was viewing them, they all seemed to be shaped much like Mama Cass(if you are old enough to remember her). Taking the provided saw I climbed into my Jeep and began to drive around the property looking for the best possibility. I put several miles on my truck before I saw a tree that I thought would do. It was a Leyland cypress that was only slightly smaller than my Jeep. The limbs grew so close to the ground that I had to lay down flat on my side just to make the saw come into contact with the bark on the trunk of the rather large tree. The temperature was hovering around fifteen degrees above freezing. The leaf detritus falling from the canopy was exacerbated by the vibration of my sawing. It fell like rain and filled the inside of my shirt and coat collars and sifted down to the naked skin of my neck and back. Can you say, "itching?" My hair was filled with dead needles or what ever you call the leafy things on a cypress tree, certainly not needles.
The trunk of this behemoth was larger than my thigh and considerably tougher. I sawed and sawed yet I never seemed to be able to cross the half way point in the diameter of the tree. I decided to move around the tree and slowly cut a small amount all the way around the circumference of the tree and then just push it over. It would snap off cleanly....at least that's how it always worked in cartoons when I used to watch them. I made the first push after sawing all the way around the tree it didn't pop off cleanly. It didn't pop off at all. Instead it split almost six inches up the tree trunk. This can't be good I thought. Hum, maybe I should sneak away to another tree and pretend I had not even tried this one, after all no one even knows I am here. No I thought, the tree only has to last a few weeks so what possible difference can it make if it has a split trunk. There's probably a camera here some where anyway. I sawed on and on. At long last the tree came down. I had this huge urge to yell "Timber" but no one was there but me and while I was thinking about yelling "Timber" the tree fell and landed directly on me. Being very thankful that no one was there to witness my foolery with the Christmas tree I crawled out from beneath it dusting debris from my head and body. A grown man wrestling with a Christmas tree out in the middle of a field the second of December and losing, was not something I wanted a lot of people to witness.
I barely managed to drag it half way to my car when it occurred to me (from my extreme panting and profuse sweating, even in that icy cold weather) that a heart attack was eminent if I didn't slow up. I moved the truck right up next to the downed tree. The mammoth tree was way to heavy for me to lift up on top of the Jeep (which had been the original plan) so I opened up the back gate and shoved the trunk end in. I let the back two seats down to accommodate the tree's size. Crawling into the cramped back end I tugged on the trunk of the tree till it was approximately one third of the way in. That was as far as it was ever going to go. The back door had to remain wide open and still the tree hung way out of the back. I slowly drove home after depositing the check for the tree in the white plastic bucket. The tree never looked to be eight feet tall. That according to my mathematical calculations came to forty dollars. It was way more that what I wanted or intended to pay for the use of a tree for three weeks! Cripes and for that price I had to almost have a heart attack cutting it down, being crushed, load it into the Jeep and drive it back home. Thank God there were no police cars out there, as they would have most certainly stopped and arrested me for, "improperly transporting a Christmas tree". There probably never have been any patrol cars on the remote dirt roads I drove home on, however. Who knew that the Garmin would even know about that area of Gilmer county?
About forty-five minutes later of driving twenty miles an hour, I safely arrived home. The tree wouldn't come out of the car, so I decided to tell Linda that we were going to have to decorate the Christmas tree out in the driveway sticking out of the back of the Jeep. I was pretty sure she would have something smart ass to say about that though. After going into the house and resting for a while I went back out and managed to pull the tree from the back of my vehicle. All the limbs on the bottom side are now skint up but it goes in a corner of the dining room anyway and only one side really has to look nice. After screwing the plant stand onto the bottom of the tree I stood it up and left it right in the middle of the gravel driveway where the dogs all took turns urinating on it. At that point I really did not care. Linda will not be able to drive around the tree when she gets home from the Methodist Women's Circle Meeting tonight but it will make a great story at some point in the future when I say, "Remember that night you came home from town and ran over the Christmas tree!" I will then question her with,"Just what and how much did you Methodist women have to drink that night?"
Dave came down later that afternoon and helped us move it into the house. If it weren't for him the Christmas tree would still be in the drive way, for sure. We spent most of the morning decorating it and after having to remove most of the lights I put on last night because of a short and having to redo most of it this morning..... And so it goes!
This story is made quite ironic because no one came to our house over Christmas because we were snowed in and every one else was snowed out!
was it worth it............. NO!
