Thursday, 9:30 AM. The day before Christmas. 25 degrees, wind S, variable. We are in a white-out, the blizzard coming north laden with Gulf moisture. I have already shoveled 7” of global warming, more is falling and the barometer predicts the same.
We are decorating our tree today, circumstances dictating that it be done at the last minute this year.
Actually that’s O.K., since Joan’s family tradition when she was a little girl was to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, and my family usually did not get a tree until a day or two before Christmas.
My father was a very gentle and kind-hearted soul, and living proof that you don’t have to go to church to be a real Christian. Consequently, our tree was usually purchased from some down-at-the-heels acquaintance of his who was trying to make some extra Christmas money. A few holiday libations usually resulted in a less-than-perfect tree at a somewhat inflated price, with maybe an extra fiver slipped into the pocket of a worn Mackinaw.
By the time I was sixteen, and for some years thereafter, I was a Christmas tree seller, my regular job at the Sinclair station morphing from pumping gas and washing cars to working on the Christmas tree lot. Those were the glory days of the flocked tree, a live tree adorned with gobs of gooey artificial snow. I can still see Eddie, the service station owner, standing in the commandeered carwash bay in flock adorned coveralls and WWII gas mask, turning out trees in a variety of colors, many of them quite livid: White with gold flecks, gold with white flecks, powder blue trees, green flocked trees (rather redundant) and even a few trees flocked so that they actually looked as though they were covered with snow. Whatever could be imagined was produced, and eventually sold. The market for kitsch trees was virtually endless: “Oooh, Honey, I want THAT one!” My duties sometimes included delivering the plastic-wrapped flocked trees in the station pickup truck. That was an envied job, as the truck had a good heater, and most deliveries garnered a dollar or two tip and maybe some cookies and once in a while a glass of eggnog to boot. As I recall, the trees could sell for as much as twenty-five dollars, a goodly sum at Christmas time, 1953. And, back in those days in Milwaukee on Christmas Eve you might still hear the old familiar song emanating from the Lutheran church:
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur
zur Sommerzeit,
Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Thanks for the little tree again this year, Andy and Judy!
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