The Trip to Find the Perfect Christmas Tree

The world is changing fast and it seems like there is nothing we can do to stop the avalanche of cultural permutations.

Just when I get a house filled with LCD, plasma, video screen, monitors, 3D hits the stores. As I develop carpal tunnel from email and texting, social networking takes control. And as I finally accrue a copious collection of DVD’s of television shows that I have already seen.... well, color me downloaded.

Sometimes I feel like the world is changing too fast. I believe that progress is good in science and medicine. But I must question if it is necessary for our traditions to go out the window every time a new gadget or gizmo is invented?

I saw an ad on TV today from one of those giant, impersonal, lumber stores. The ad was for a pre-decorated, artificial, Christmas tree. A clean-cut wearer of a bright-colored, name-tagged, apron of acquiescence pulled a string. Within a few seconds a fully decorated, plastic, holiday tree popped up. For $79.99 they offered instant Christmas. Memories in a rip chorded moment.

I should have expected this advancement in technology. I was almost convinced last year to buy an inflatable Nativity Scene. It had such great appeal. The offer included three free bobbing-head wise men (for just additional shipping and handling).

Pull a chord and Presto-Christo! Do we really need Christmas in an instant?

I think that the holidays are a time to slow down and keep with a few solid traditions. If not for your own sanity, keep some tradition for the sanity of your kids. Do you want your kids to grow up and someday say, “ Remember Christmas? Best 45 seconds of the year!”

Slow down.

Has the world become too fast-paced? Can’t we pause long enough to go buy a Christmas tree? Is decorating a small pine with some ornaments and a string of lights too tedious for the modern family? I hope not.

In my life, getting the Christmas tree was one of the most memorable, dysfunctional times I remember. Tree shopping has helped preserve the dysfunctional DNA of our family for future generations.

Christmas tree shopping was an annual adventure. The whole process started with the car. When I was a kid we loaded the entire family into a station wagon, drove to a “tree lot” and picked out a tree. This was usually done a few days following Thanksgiving after the family had consumed a copious dinner. 

Getting the family in the car was the first challenge of tree shopping. My father was a manger for a soda bottling company and was supplied with a vehicle by his boss. Our family car was my father’s business car. In 1959, Dad was proud to drive a nearly new 1957 Chevy station wagon. I would insert a photograph of this car at this point but that is impossible. No one in our family would have their picture taken with the car.

This was no ordinary car. Being a company vehicle, the auto was painted the official colors of the main product my father sold. The car was custom painted a bright yellow and red. The front and rear fenders of the Chevy were bright red. The side doors, the back door, roof and the hood were a fiery yellow. 

The product my father sold was named Squirt. Squirt was (and still is) a carbonated and sugar laden, citrus beverage that had a very unique logo. Our family car was also covered with these product logos. The logo was a diminutive character named “Squirt”. Squirt was a curly-haired, collegian dressed, dwarf bearing the official colors of the company. Squirt smiled broadly as he held a giant bottle of Squirt in his small hands. Squirt held the bottle proudly like the torch of the Statue of Liberty while proclaiming, “Drink Squirt!”

If you click here you can see the logo.

The logos filled each of the side doors of the station wagon. It was also painted on the hood and was on the tailgate. It could be seen clearly from any direction in order to promote the product my father sold. The emblems ran from the window to the floorboards.

But that is not all.

Earlier that year my fathers’ company added a new product. He started selling an orange soda made by a company named Nesbitt’s. To help advertise the new product my father added another promotional tool to our car. He installed a 48-inch high plastic, full color bottle of Nesbitt’s Orange Soda…to the roof.

Click here to see the giant bottle.

The classic protruding fins of a 1957 Chevy, a chrome, flying jet for a hood ornament, bright red and yellow paint, curly haired midgets on all sides and a giant orange bottle of soda on the top. That was our family car.

My three older sisters were all teenagers. Needless to say they had to be forced to go into the car. My oldest sister Faith was 18 and refused to use the car for her drivers test. My sister Chris was 16 and insisted on being dropped off blocks away from her friend’s house. My sister Joy was 12 and volunteered to walk to school everyday. My mother would not go to church in “that car.”

Me? I was four. I thought we had the coolest car in the world. I also believed that our car was the perfect car to get a giant Christmas tree.

Happily for my sisters, we always seemed to go tree shopping on the darkest night of the winter. No one could see them in the car. The night also seemed to coincide with a blast of cold, moist winter air.

The drive to the tree lot was always quick. Yet the journey was always filled with the singing of lots of Christmas songs. My father loved to sing along. Dad had what can be accurately described as one, good, loud baritone note. The lack of a full range never stopped him from repeating that note for several entire songs. My mother had a beautiful voice but seldom sang along. I often thought that the note that my father sang was on a secret frequency that forced my mothers jaw shut. She hummed the songs as the family drove to our destination.

My sisters began singing along when they became assured that we were out of our neighborhood and on a safe route where none of their friends could possibly hear us. I was four and knew few of the actual words to the songs. This never stopped me from singing my perceived versions of the traditional songs. I am certain I erroneously sang about the “long round virgin” but no one could touch “ my rump pun puns” during the Little Drummer Boy.

Within a few moments we gregariously arrived at our destination. The quest for the perfect tree took place in what can only be described as a “used car lot for fir trees.”

Since strip malls had yet to be invented (isn’t it hard to believe that my parents actually won a world war without malls being invented?) trees were sold in empty lots near railroad tracks, grocery stores or churches. The lot was dimly lit. My father claimed they did that so, “You pay more for a lousy tree.”

The lot had a salesman that never required a special nametag or title. The person selling trees was not today’s uninformed teenager that hides when you approach them. Our annual attendant was an adult male smoking a snow-drenched, half-extinguished cigar. He knew everything about Christmas trees. And what he didn’t know, he would make up.

In our town it was Gus. Gus was the large black man that also ran the city dump. I called Gus a “black man” because that is what he said I should call him. In 1959 other people called him lots of things. To me he was always ”Gus”.

I loved seeing Gus because the trips to the dump were always fun. He let me throw stuff at the dump. I loved baseball and I loved throwing things. While my father was unloading an old sofa or trimmings from our willow tree, Gus would hand me stuff to throw. He would say, “I’ve been saving this piece of junk just for you. I bet you can get it way down the pile where it belongs.” I would wind up with a giant kick emulating my childhood hero, Warren Spahn. I would nearly fall from the inertia of my action.

Gus would always wipe his brow with a tattered red handkerchief and praise my toss no matter how far I threw the item.

He greeted my dad at the tree lot as he always had done at the dump. Gus couldn’t remember everyone that came to the dump but he could easily remember our car. “Hello, Mr. Squirt. What can I do for you?

My Dad, always a jokester said, “This time I’m here to take some of your junk home with me, Gus” And the entire family scattered to find the perfect tree.

As a five-year-old kid, my first impulse was to go for the tallest tree in the lot. My logic in picking the biggest tree was infallible. “Let’s get this one. The bigger the tree...the more room for presents.” My father would immediately dash my dreams.

“Greedy kids just get coal and rocks for Christmas. Maybe we should just get a Christmas bucket for you.”

When I was finished crying, my father would explain why we needed a smaller tree. Our house was too small for the 12-foot high tree I had chosen. Our home was small and if the tree was too big it would block the door for Santa. This was important to me since our home did not have a fireplace. I was already fearful that Santa would skip our house because of this design flaw. A clear path from the doorway was important.

After a few minutes of scouring the lot we would each return with our perfect tree. One by one we would present our choices. Our entire family would form what must have looked like a police line-up for criminal Blue Spruce.

My father came prepared. He had brought a piece of string that he used to measure the distance from the ceiling to the floor of our living room. Dad would walk next to each of us, take out the piece of string, and measure the tree height. He never compensated for the additional height that the tree stand would add to the tree. My mother knew this but remained silent. When we got home the tree always needed the trunk trimmed. This was a process that involved, steak knives, an axe, mom’s nail file and copious expletives.

After a selection of proper trees had been measured, my father would take over the operation. He would take each tree firmly by the trunk and shake it. This was to check for loose and dry needles that could fall off before Christmas. This was the tree equivalence to melon thumping.

My mother then became the final tree judge. Dad would slowly turn each tree so that Mom could look for bare spots and areas with minimal needle coverage. A visual scan for busted limbs that would cave from the pressure of ornaments or sinuous, abnormal, bends in the tree trunk that would make the tree stand flip over.

To acquire a straight tree, teamwork was necessary. Dad would then grasp the best tree and instruct my mother and sisters to “back up and take a good look.” We scattered to four opposing viewpoints. If Dad had surveying tolls he would have used them. He had five sets of eyes to help make this decision and was going to use all of them to see if the trunk was straight. My mother, who had one leg that was longer than the other, never really gave an accurate assessment. She would tilt her head to the left. My father would tilt the tree to the right, Mom would tilt her head to the right and my father would tilt the tree to the left. I am amazed that stayed married over 50 years.

After a few, “ I don’t knows” and a handful of "I guess so’s”, the tree was chosen.

This was usually the final stage of our annual tree quest. However, this year, Mom seemed unable to commit to the chosen, perfect tree.

What none of knew was that our Mother had her own agenda. She had an idea in her mind of the tree she wanted. She had seen it in a copy of a magazine called Better Homes and Garden. My mother grew up during the depression. She had always wanted a better home and better garden.

As my father stood impatiently holding the finalist of the Christmas tree line-up, Mom walked past him toward her dream tree.

At the end of the tree lot was a sprawling pine. The tree was over 8 feet high and almost as wide. The limbs were strong and pointed skyward. The needles were very long. The tree was full and thick. The trunk was sturdy and straight.

The tree was also flocked to give the appearance of being covered with snow.

It was sprayed with bright, blue, fake snow.

My usually quiet mother began to tell us about the tree she had seen in the magazine. It was this tree. It was thickly sprayed with chemical, sticky snow and decorated with shimmering, mirrored blue ornaments. There was a spinning light fixture that was placed in front of the decorated tree that turned green, yellow and red.

We had never had a flocked tree. There was no way that Dad would buy that tree, it cost twice as much as a regular tree. My mom never asked for much from my dad. The only time I remember her asking for anything was when it was something for us…the kids.

Mom didn’t ask. Mom didn’t whine. She just sighed and stared at that giant, fluffy, blue Christmas tree that she had seen in Better Homes and Gardens. While my Dad was, always gruff and made traditional decisions, he had a soft side that always broke through.

Dad loved to make my Mom happy. “I suppose you have to have the blue ornaments and the light, too?”

A look, a smile and a sigh was all that followed.

“Let’s load it in the car, Gus.” said my father. It was 1959. People actually helped you when you bought something.

Gus removed some twine from a pocket of his tattered winter coat and bound the tree with a wrapping that could make a King Tut jealous. My mother watched to be certain that the limbs and needles of her coveted tree were handled with extra care.

“Where you want it, Mr., Squirt?”, said Gus. “Looks like the roof is already full. If I put this big tree in the car here’s no place to sit the kids.”

Even at the age of five I knew how important that tree was to my mom. I also knew how proud my father was of that new Nesbitt’s bottle on his roof.

“The bottles not coming down.” said my Dad.

I knew Dad would not budge. Earlier that summer we had to endure the horns of countless attendees at a drive-in movie. Despite pleas from my mother, he refused to remove the bottle from the roof of the car while we were at the drive-in. We were forced to move from empty parking spot to empty parking spot as the honking cars behind us were blocked from seeing Doris Day in “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.”

The memory is clear to me because after a few more of my mother's sighs my father gave in. He removed the bottle and put it next to me in the "way back" of the station wagon. I then watched the movie in my private station wagon suite, dressed in my pajamas and rolled into a blanket with a giant orange bottle.

Gus said, “I can follow you with the kids in the truck from the dump.”

Dad didn’t even look at my mother or sisters. He knew that would not fly.I was already headed for the old, rusty truck.

“Tie it to the bottle. CAREFULLY!”, said Dad.

We drove home slowly. We had to take a special route to avoid any underpasses. My sisters were not visible in the car. Occasionally the top of one of their heads would emerge. They would make a quick glance to make certain none of their friends could see our car.

I was bouncing from seat to seat with excitement. I tried desperately to get a view of the giant blue Christmas tree that was tied to a giant bottle of orange soda on our car roof.

”I can’t see the bottle or the tree, Daddy! It’s too dark out. Maybe we should have put some lights on the tree. I can’t see it!” I said with true disappointment.

“Too dark to see the Nesbitt’s bottle? I have an idea Scotty.”

My father was aware of my sisters’ embarrassment, there were times when he used this knowledge to his amusement.

“When Christmas is over, let’s take the spinning light that we bought for Mom’s tree and put it on the car roof. That way people can see the bottle all night long wherever we go. They’ll see us coming from across town!”

My mother shook her head and sighed for the final time that Christmas season. My sisters sank deeper into the seats of the 1957 Chevy station wagon. They knew well that if my father heard even a minimal whine that he would follow through on his threat. All were quiet. My father laughed as heartily as he had sung Christmas songs.

I was happy as I dreamed that the coolest car in the world…was going to get even cooler.

So folks. This holiday…slow down.

You can’t get a memory like out of an instant Christmas tree.