The Christmas Tree

We are not known for having a beautiful Christmas tree.

In fact, just the opposite.  While most people visit others at Christmas

and enjoy admiring their trees, I think secretly people come

here to see if our tree is worse this year than last.

We cut a cedar.  It smells divine.  It looks good....

in the field.  Inside, after being "trimmed" to fit the room

it usually looks more like a "Christmas bush"....you know, trimmed from the top instead of

the bottom.

Now that they are older, the farm hands go out

on the old one-horse-open-four-wheeler and pretty much

cut whatever they can find....quickly.

Last year was no exception.  F2 volunteered to fetch a tree

and returned 15 minutes later with what I thought was

a fine speciman.  He brought it in the house, trimmed it to fit the

stand and set it up.  I thought it was all good....at least no worse than usual.

It was about this time that the farmer and older farm hand arrived.

To say they began to laugh would be a gross under statement.

Picture knee-slapping, hee-hawing....falling down on the sofa laughing.

Let me pause and say that F2 is a mild-mannered guy....In fact,

I can count on one hand the number of times I have EVER seen him mad. 

He just doesn't get mad often.

This was one of the exceptions.

For whatever reason, this knee-slapping, hee-hawing

hit him wrong....Think "The Christmas Story" movie

when Ralphie has had enough of Scott Farkus and explodes.

F2 went off.  He yanked the tree from it's stand,

opened the front door, and flung it into the yard, turned and

said to no one in particular, "go get your own tree...!"

The knee slapping reached a fever-pitch at this point as I

chased after him trying to repair the damage, begging him to put the

fine tree back in it's stand....

Somehow, the tree got back in the stand and looked just fine

after it was decorated and

while I am hoping there will not be a repeat this year, that will go down

in the books as one of my fondest Christmas memories....

and no, we do not have a tree this year yet....and F2 declares if it is left up to him

we will NOT have one this year....we'll see......