A Child's Xmas Tree

A Child's Christmas Tree

    I can't remember if it was the 15-foot Christmas trees in the 14 foot-ceiling living room, or 12- foot trees in a 10 foot room (after mom and dad had the ceilings lowered). What remains is that whatever the height of the tree, whatever the year, they were always too tall.

    Off the living room was the "alcove," a staple of the Victorian era that was probably supposed to have been the Benson's daughter's music parlor. The Benson family built the place about 1890. About 20 feet by 12 feet, it was, in fact, the ideal place for the upright piano. The tree would go into the alcove, the piano would just have to get used to it.

    It wasn't merely parsimony that propelled the annual tree fetching ritual. Larger issues were at stake. The whole business of self-reliance, of steadfast adherence to a tradition that went way back to my dad's farm in Catlin Hollow, Tioga County, of manliness, valor, of "woodsmanship," of selecting and felling a "fresh" tree, the joy and satisfaction of the return to the homestead, not one miles away from one's nearest neighbor, but, rather, disappointingly, merely on Allegheny Avenue, within a stone's throw of other, similar outposts of civilization; yea, the ritual was all, it was everything, modern America be hanged.

    And so my dad and I, hardy, seasoned travelers of the lonesome snow-swept back roads of Potter County approached the killing ground, snow swirling and blinding, immediately mummifying the parked '36 Chevy. Then the trek through the blindingly white landscape to find the perfect tree. Questions of legality banished weeks before with a "sure, Prof, I've got some good trees over on the south side as you come up the hollow," addressed to my dad who had the farmer's son in his VoAg class at public school. Questions of how do we get the damn thing back to the car, now sinking rapidly into a white vortex of fleecy down, dismissed with a wave and a flourish as dad explained how they 'slide' easier in deep snow. "Keep a sharp eye, we want a good one!"

    We cruised the 'south side,' appraising the collection: too skimpy, too irregular, too droopy, not a good trunk - "look for symmetry, your mother wants symmetry, and we'd damned well better be able to deliver symmetry." And on, and on, slogging through knee-deep snow, like two raving castaways from a polar expedition, and the need to do it quickly, because the whole operation had to be carried out after school hours when the days were shorter and shorter. In my eyes, the trees, in the failing light, begin to morph themselves into an endless sea of bough and bough. Finally a tree, a very grand, almost regal, white pine, just begging to share the yule with the family.

    "But Dad, don't you think it's a little big and too tall?"

    "Naw, we can always trim it down. Looks good, don't you think?"

    "I think it looks tall...maybe it's the light, or lack of it."

    "Probably. Well, get the saw...let's get 'er down."

    And down it came, bird nests and all - with a trunk as thick around as a sumo wrestler's thigh. Did it slide easily? Well, maybe easier than on dry ground, but not exactly a cake walk, more like the Labors of Hercules. How we managed to haul it back I can't imagine today. Somehow, miraculously, it was always there, lashed to the Chevy, on our triumphant return to the happy homestead.

    If the old Victorian house had not had double front doors, the annul tree-fitting exercise would never have been possible. Swung out to their fullest, the tree just barely made it into the hallway. Had the living room not had double French doors, there it would have been marooned. And on into the alcove, where it lay like a green walrus beached on a polished oak ice flow. And then the moment, the inevitable moment, the raising...and sure enough the top bends under the implacable, unyielding ceiling.

    "For heavens sake, Carl, it's too tall," cries my mother. "Can't you ever get it right!"

    "It's not bad, just a couple of feet. Nice, though, isn't it," murmurs the victorious hunter of trees, rocking back on his heels to get a good look.

    "Get it out of here. Tom, go get the measure, see if you can fix it. And don't forget to leave room for the angel. Crime-in-ees, what a mess!" My mother stomps out of the room

    Forget that I might have had plans to spend some time with my buddies over Cokes. Instead, major front porch tree surgery, including the fabrication of the traditional home made tree stand, gets underway with much discussion, measuring, re-measuring, cursing, turning the tree, more cursing, running to Doorfield's hardware store for nails, more cursing, until finally the job is done. The left over pile of cut off limbs is enough to make Christmas wreaths for the whole street.

    Then back into the house, praying that this would be it, that the tree, with the damned angel, would fit. Up..."easy does it...grunt..."watch that limb"...groan, push, shove..."get it centered on the sheets, for crying out loud"...a final mighty heave and it's in place. Get out the 10-foot stepladder. Get out the angel. And no matter how hard I try to push it down, the angel bobs in holy supplication, head banging and nodding against the ceiling like the then popular dashboard figurines, a perpetual genuflection not to heavenly grace, but to the fallibility of would be woodsmen.

    "Maybe the tree will shrink," says my younger sister, hopefully.

    "It'll have to do," says my mother, "I've got dinner to get on. The rest of you can get it decorated."

    Decorating even a modest tree in wartime required a lot of improvisation. Everything, it appears, that decorations are made of was war material. So there were none to be had in the stores. And even if there were, they would have been beyond the means on my parent's budget. Foil icicles were carefully stripped and wrapped each year to be used the next, for example.

    Our trees, trees that seemed to have taken root in the cellar and grown madly overnight to erupt through the floor in a profusion of limbs and all engulfing boughs, that swelled and leavened like homemade bread, seemingly, as one watched, compounded the problem. This wall of pine, formerly the alcove, now more like a display case in an arboretum, would require hundreds of ornaments and miles of lights. We had a couple of strings of the old cone shaped one-goes-out-they-all-go-out lights, a couple of strings of 'outdoor lights,' the 'big bulbs,' that lasted much longer. These were strung at the top of the tree, the others lower down so that each day when a bulb burned out, as they always did, we could conduct the hour-long search without a ladder. Indeed, much of my remembrance of our trees is of bulb sleuthing. Ah, the good old days!

    These were the days of homemade ornaments: crocheted snowflakes in endlessly different patterns, starched and stiff as stone; wooden jig-sawed cutouts of all of the popular holiday figures - Santa's, many Santa's -laughing, waving, jumping, once, even a sleeping Santa, and snowmen, reindeer, sleds, etc., painted and gilded, a new batch each year for the youngest child and later, grandchild, to paint; popcorn balls, of course, and popcorn strung on stout thread; cigarette package foil saved and artfully wrapped around ordinary beads and other bangles; my mother's finely stitched and detailed stuffed dolls, stockings, pin cushions and other items dressed out in bits of fancy lace, ribbon and other fabric left over from more prosaic projects. The tree, the wall of green, became a many faceted collection of the old and new, the store-bought and the hand made, the simple and the complex, the shiny and the dull, and visitors to the site could read, much as an anthropologist might, the story of our family.

    Many, many years later when my own son was about nine or ten, we brought in our own tree. Why not? I had a truck, permission to cut from an abandoned Christmas tree farm, and the child was eager. It would be easy. And fun. And traditional.

    "Can we get a big tree, dad," he asked.

    "We'll get a tree," I said. "It'll be manageable."

    And so we repeated the hunt, on a bone-chilling, overcast December day, through the same knee-deep snow, the same bewildering array of nodding pines, along the same lonely, barely a track, back woods road. The same too tall, too short, too lumpy, too scraggly trees, our tracks crossing and criss-crossing each other, until we found the 'manageable' tree. One with a trunk merely the size of a moose leg. Everything was fine, it dragged easily, it loaded into the truck bed easily, it was fun and Phillip had picked out and cut his first tree. It was getting dusk when we jumped back into the truck.

    The road, the track, really, was narrow. It would take several back and forths to turn the truck around to return to town. And then it happened, with the wheel cranked full over and the truck astride the road, the gear shift broke off! In first gear. Phillip's first tree became in addition to the hunt for the perfect tree, a first lesson in roadside emergencies. With the clutch held in, he could just barely push the truck back, I would release the clutch and move it forward a short distance. Back and forth, back and forth until we were turned around. The trip out had taken us maybe 20 minutes; the trip home, in first gear, took almost an hour.

    That was the last of the woods-cut trees.