Thursday, December 11, 2014

O Christmas Tree

My late mother-in-law had a neighbor with a number of quirks, one of which was the habit of setting up three Christmas trees every year. It took three trees to hold all the ornaments and lights his family had, I gather. I never saw them, but heard that there were two on the main floor, and one in the finished basement. Now and then I wonder whether we will end up like that family, for example when I find us putting fourteen strands of lights on the tree.

We drove out to River Road last Saturday afternoon to get our Christmas tree. I was interested--astonished--to see what some of the trees cost, and also to see the dump of trees in reserve from the display area. It appeared to me that reserve area was about fifteen yards each way, piled maybe six feet deep. Last Saturday we had drizzle and rain all day long, but while we examined trees, we were under a roof.

On the way back, K told me that I would probably not be able to get the tree into the house by myself, for it had taken two employees to lift it onto our car. Now, it seemed to me that this proved only so much. The store management might have set a two-employee policy to keep somebody from underestimating the difficulty and damaging a customer's car, say by snapping off a mirror. However, it turned out that the essential point, that the tree is heavy, was correct. Still, I lugged it onto the porch, and we got it set up.

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