Searching For an Xmas Tree

I was at Home Depot with a couple of friends today buying wood to repair our front steps. One said to the other... "we are going to leave you here with the cart while we go look for something better."

That immediately made laugh out loud, and when I tried to explain why, I immediately stopped trying knowing full well that it was one of those things that was only funny to me and my family. It reminded me of when we used to go hunting for Christmas trees when I was a child.

I grew up way out in the middle of nowhere or as the geography folks call it -- Hunterdon County. When it came time to buy a Christmas tree, there wasn't an empty lot next to an automobile dealership converted to a tree farm for a month like in Middlesex County. No. You had to go to a tree farm and find and cut down your own tree. As good Hunterdon County residents, this is how we shopped for our tree.

I have a lot of fond memories of Christmas tree shopping, and it has been a long time since I was part of the tree farm experience. I remember the overwhelming smell of the pine. I remember watching my Dad cut the tree down. I remember unloading it from the car when we got home. I even remember loving to watch the tree be thrown into the netting machine.

However, I most remember a particular portion of the tree buying process.

My parents and younger brother and sister would all pour into the van and head over to the tree farm about 5 miles away with the goal of coming home with the perfect tree. Every year -- we found it. This was the direct result of due diligence and a careful inspection of most of the trees in the field.

The key to finding a quality tree is not to stop when you think you find the perfect tree. You have to keep looking. The problem then lies in the following question -- how do we remember which tree we originally thought was perfect, especially with other folks in the yard looking for that perfect tree? The answer is simple -- leave your kid there.

My parents would leave one of us kids by the tree and then take the other kids to locate an even more perfect tree. Since I was the oldest, I was usually the one left by the tree.

My job was to read my book and wonder what I would do if someone wanted the tree that I was holding for my parents. I would probably have whined and screamed because that is what 8 years are good at. Peprhaps I would have kicked them mightlily in the balls or shins.

Who knows... but all I do know is that we always had a perfect Christmas tree each year and it was because of my hard work and dedication. Without me... a perfect tree would have been unobtainable.