THE TREE TOO BIG

Dooley’s Hardware Store was located in my childhood home but is now long gone. The store occupied a full city block and sold much more than hardware. It was a great place to find bargains at any time of year. I recently saw one of their ads from 1970s (posted on Facebook) advertising Christmas trees at wholesale prices. I could not believe the store was listing trees of 1-2 feet for 59 cents, 2-3 feet at 98 cents, 5-6 feet for $2.85, and—get this—7-8+ feet trees for $3.80!

After the recent years-long drought and frequent fires out here in the West, Christmas trees have become a rare commodity and that circumstance will continue into the foreseeable future. This fact makes the impact of the Dooley’s ad even more startling.

The ad brought back a memory from when I was six. I do not know what the going rate for trees was back then, but I am sure that my dad recognized a good deal and went for it. He headed out to Dooley’s alone to get a tool of some kind. I don’t remember if he found the tool he wanted. What I do remember is him coming back with the biggest tree we ever had. He struggled to get it through the wide front door. The bottom of the tree was so big, it had to be forced through the doorway. And it was heavy, too. Dad’s feet shuffled across the floor as he grunted with effort.

“Bob, it’s too big!” Mom told him before he even set it up. “It’ll never fit. What possessed you to buy such a big tree?”

“It’ll be fine,” said Dad. “Don’t worry about it. You won’t believe how cheap it was.”

“They probably wanted to get it off the lot,” my Grandma grumbled to herself.

We rushed around moving things out of the way to make room. Finally, he maneuvered it into the dining room with our help. Then he positioned the base and began walking the tree into an upright position. The top of the tree, about ten to twelve inches of it, scraped against our nine-foot ceiling and bent into an L-shape when the tree was settled.

“You’ll have to cut it,” Mom told him.

Dad huffed. He was not pleased. To cut the tree, he would have to get it back out of the house. His shoulders drooped as he thought about it.

“And you’ll have to trim some of the lower branches while you’re at it.” said Mom. The tree took up more than half of the dining room floor’s width and length. Opening the  door of my bedroom at the far end of the dining room would push against the branches on the that side of the tree. This was a BIG tree.

“You’ll have to take it out through the kitchen,” Mom told him.

While Dad gathered his strength, Mom and Grandma hurried into the kitchen and service porch to move things out of the reach of the tree.

“No, don’t do that,” said Dad. “I’ll take it back out the front and down the driveway into the back.” Which he proceeded to do, once again forcing the base of the tree through our front door. Grandma grabbed a broom and began to sweep up the needles that had been dragged from the tree, shaking her head, “Tsk, Tsk.”

My cousin Jeanie was staying with us that Christmas. We both wanted to go outside to see Dad cut down the tree, but Mom forbade it. “You two stay inside.” So, we had to be content with watching through the windows as Dad dragged and hauled the tree down our front steps, and back along the driveway, through the back gate into the yard and then behind the garage. Afterwards, we heard the sound of the manual saw, stroke after stroke, as the tree shrank.

Both of us hoped he would not spoil the tree. It had been so pretty, except for the bent top. It was beautifully shaped and full—no big bald spots. It was a wonderful tree. We both knew why he had bought it. How could he resist? Santa Claus would be so impressed. We waited anxiously while Mom and Grandma fussed about how to cope with such a big tree. They worried, too, about what it would look like when Dad was finished with the trimming.

At last, Jeanie and I saw him bringing the tree back toward the house. “He’s coming,” we shouted.

My dad, at first, headed toward the much smaller, though closer, back door. “You can’t bring that through here,” said Mom, changing her mind from before. “It’s much too big. You’ll have to take it back out the driveway and in through the front.”

So, Dad hauled the tree around the side of the house and through the front door once more. Jeanie and I tried to help him by grabbing branches to pull on our end.

“Get away from the tree, girls,” said Mom. “You’ll get hurt and you’re in the way.” We backed off.

When the tree was standing upright again, the top looked odd. The point that should have been there was missing. Later we would discover that our tree topper would not fit over the branch left available for it. We ended up fashioning a decoration that would have to serve.

Even with some of the back branches trimmed, the lowest branches still spread across one-third of the floor. We could not center the tree in the large picture window as we usually did because my bedroom door would still hit the lowest branches. Eventually, Dad had to clip a few of those, so my door could open easily.

We ran out of ornaments. Mom took us shopping downtown for more. Even so, we did not have quite enough. Dad had to buy another string of lights for it, too.

“It’ll be fine,” he said when we mourned about too few ornaments. “After we add the tinsel, you’ll see. It will be fine.” Dad was a master at hanging tinsel, much better than the rest of us. Mom was too slow and fussy, and Grandma was almost as short as Jeanie and I so the top branches were out of our reach.

The memory of that tree always has always made me a little sad. Dad had been so proud of the tree when he brought it home and so disappointed when we were not as happy as he imagined we would be. Over the years, we reminded him of his mistake, never making it clear that we had long ago forgiven him and that we loved that tree.

It was a beautiful tree, a magnificent tree. We never had one nearly as big again. And Dad never again bought a tree without us. Even so, one year we ended up with a sad last minute pink tree, but that’s another story.