remembering Christmas...

... is actually a draft that I made last December to remind me to write about history. When I was thinking about things that happened when I was young (er), and wanted to put some stuff down for my little band of readers (two of whom are close relatives) to enjoy. Several stories I don't mind telling on myself now that I can look back and find amusement in things that would not have been mentioned or confessed years ago.

There was the last Christmas tree I remember putting up in the house at 1209, when my brother was still at home. This may have been the December before he got married in January. So we would have both actually been pretty much out of the house, and coming back as single adults (term 'adult' applied very loosely, as I rarely think I qualify even today) to spend holiday with parents. I won't put a year date on it. But it was a really long time ago.

I can't recall where fresh cut Christmas trees came from when I was a child, but assume my dad went someplace and cut one down. There was always a prickly red cedar. It was very scratchy and would itch you to distraction when putting on lights, ornaments and silver strands of icicles. Put in a tree stand with water, but would get astoundingly dry and shed terribly by the time it was removed from the house.

My brother and I were 'sent' to get a tree. We didn't know precisely how/where they had come from in our family history, but off we went with hand saw in the pick up truck. Into the rural areas of the county, down various dirt roads. Where we eventually spotted one, growing along a fence row. So we hopped out, and cut it down, dragged it to the back of the truck, loaded the tree, and ourselves.

I have a clear remembrance of some man standing out in the road yelling at us as we made a hasty retreat. So apparently that was the same tree he was planning to cut, from his fence row, to use in his house.  For his family Christmas tree. The deed was done, and I look back over the years with considerable guilt. I think we must have beat it out of there and back home, looking like whipped puppies, hoping that the farmer would not come knocking on the door?