Trees and Tree Stands

We put up our Christmas tree last night. I can’t remember ever doing that in November, but Thanksgiving was late this month and the timing just seemed right. We had cut it down at a tree farm in Petaluma on Saturday, one of our favorite family traditions. Every year, we bundle up, load the dog or dogs into the van and head north. Usually, we spend the better part of an hour picking out just the right conifer, but it was cold and windy, so we voted to choose quickly. Fortunately, we had arrived on the first weekend the farm was open for business, so the selection was better than usual. Pat found this year’s winner, and it is one of the jolliest and fattest trees our house has known.

I got to thinking, and realized that cutting down a Christmas tree is one of my first childhood memories. I can still feel my father’s Pendleton-clad arms around me, helping me to work the big saw. In those days, you provided your own cutting tool at the tree farm, and ours was a well-used crosscut saw from my dad’s workshop. It’s slow business cutting down a tree when you’re only four or five, but we eventually completed the task, with just enough time to yell “TIMBER!” before the mighty conifer crashed to the forest floor.

Each time I put up our family tree in its convenient self-leveling stand, I think back to how it used to be. My father would cut a slice off the bottom of the trunk and attach the stand. First, three long and rusty eye-bolts would have to be unscrewed all the way, and then screwed back into the trunk. This was finger-cramping work. Then the tree would be put upright and the fun would begin. The only way to level the tree was to unscrew the bolt or bolts on one side, just a little bit, and then screw in the opposing ones the same amount. Naturally, this trial-and-error method meant that the tree was now leaning either too far the other way, or in an entirely new direction altogether. A more inexact method could not be found, apparently. Over time, and as my brother and I took over this seasonal chore, we got pretty good at it. Especially given the trees we sometimes had to work with.

That’s because it was decided at some point that, while we could certainly afford to buy one each year, there were perfectly good trees in our own backyard, so why not use those? Now there is a distinct difference between trees that are carefully grown, watered and pruned to be the centerpiece of someone’s Christmas décor – and ours. The motley crew from which we had to pick had grown on hillsides (assuring bent trunks) or against fences (no branches on one side). Inevitably, they featured enormous and dreaded “bare spots” that had to be disguised, sometimes by drilling a hole in the trunk and stuffing a stray branch in the gap. Each provided its own challenges in the tree stand department. We became expert at giving the appearance of verticality to trees that most Societies for the Severely Crippled would have rejected as beyond hope.

Eventually, the supply of available normal-sized trees was depleted. That was when it was decided that we could cut the top off a larger tree and that would do just as well. That is how several of the twenty-foot tall evergreens in the back yard were decapitated. And if the tippy-top was too bare, we simply lopped that off, too. In those cases, the result was a tree that rose from floor to ceiling in a straight line – a veritable column of pine branches.

The Clark household became known for its unusual post-modern Christmas trees. As guests arrived at our door, they would quickly press past peremptory hugs to see what curiosity had been erected in our living room.

As much as we were oddly proud of our misshapen trees, I have now gone the other direction, in much the same way that I cannot stand to live with the kind of Danish Modern furniture that used to fill our house. I appreciate a sexy, well-shaped tree with a vertical trunk. That seems ironic, now that I have a Christmas tree stand that can level just about anything in a flash.

But perhaps this is one of those things that skips a generation. Maybe, one day, my daughter will once again revel in the kind of tree that only Charlie Brown could love. In anticipation of that possible future, I hereby bequeath to you, Jessica, my self-leveling Christmas tree stand, which cost all of forty dollars, and that has been among my most-cherished and practical possessions. You’re welcome, Sweetheart.