The Christmas Tree – Prequel, Sequel and Denouement
Before our fully decorated Christmas tree fell over in the living room and sucked the holiday spirit right out of my bone marrow, I made a modest effort to find a new tree stand to keep such a catastrophe from happening. I knew that the old tree stand was broken. It was ten years old; the cracked plastic barely held up last year’s tree. But I wanted to try a different kind of tree stand this time. More and more, the Christmas tree sales guys are drilling holes in the bottom of the trees and then standing them in special stands that have a sharp metal spike, four inches or so high, sticking straight up in a menacing fashion. The stands have long rebar legs painted green. The whole thing is ugly as sin and is reminiscent of a prop from the Conan the Barbarian movies. But they work great to hold a Christmas tree straight with minimum fuss. And minimum fuss is my working motto.
The problem is you can’t buy these stands in the Blah-Mart stores. I was in several of these box stores over the weekend. They all had stack upon stack of the familiar plastic bucket-style stands with the four support screws, but none of the grotesque impaling style stands that I was looking for. So I passed them all by. The guy who sold me the tree would probably have the stand I was looking for, I figured, so I went by and visited him again (even though he had crazy eyes that danced around erratically and gave me vertigo if I looked at him for more than ten straight seconds). The tree guy said he didn’t know if he had any stands left and went off to look. He disappeared for a long time behind the camper that serves as his home while he sells his trees throughout much of December. Finally, he came back holding a stand. It was nastier than I could have imagined. The sharp spike was rusty, the paint had chipped off the legs and the plastic bucket that holds the water was caked in mud. “This has been used,” I told him. “Nah,” he said, “it just fell out of its box and got knocked around a bit.” He offered it at discount. Ten dollars. I may be a city boy these days, but I was born in a holler just like this guy and I know a lame goat when I see one.
So I passed on this stand, too. I went home for lunch thinking maybe the old stand could be fixed for one more year. I looked in on the tree only to discover that it had fallen a second time! After the tree fell the first time, Cynde and I propped it up and turned it 180 degrees so that the balance was shifted toward the wall should it decide to tip again. Nevertheless, it fell forward of its own accord and more ornaments bit the dust.
I was feeling severely humbled at this point. Minimum fuss was turning into maximum ass pain. It was time to hit the Blah-Mart, pick up a perfectly acceptable plastic stand, transfer the tree and seek out some holiday spirit in the form of twelve-year-old single malt Scotch.
The first Blah-Mart I tried was out of stands completely. Just yesterday they had them stacked to the ceiling. Today: nada. The sales kid failed to see the irony in my story. “You should have bought one yesterday when we still had them,” he smirked. Prick. The second store was out of the big ones, too, but had some small stands that would have been perfect if were decorating a sapling. The third store was also wiped out except for a supply of gimmicky stands that rotate. A rotating Christmas tree stand? Hmm, “round and round she goes, where she falls, nobody knows.”
I gave up. I called my wife on my cell phone and told her the tree was staying on its side. We could stack the Christmas presents under the Norfolk Island Pine. In a last ditch effort, on her way home from work, Cynde stopped at a drugstore and found an inexpensive stand that was actually big enough and strong enough to hold our tree. It appears to be well made. The best part is that it reminds me of the tree stand I had when I was a kid: the cast metal variety with the red water bowl and the curved green legs. It’s beautiful in its halcyon simplicity. As I write these words on my laptop I am gazing at our tree, re-redecorated and standing tall. Right now I’m thinking that this is the only present I need.
9:14:17 PM 
|
|
