Denise at GirlieOnTheEdge
is asking us to write a
Six Sentence Story
and to include the word “farm”.
This is my story.
Early in our marriage, Bill and I inherited my parent’s ginormous artificial Christmas tree which we used for about ten years until it died; at that point our boys were very young and we thought it would be a nice family outing to go to one of the local nurseries to pick out a live tree, which was something we did for about four years until one Thanksgiving, while celebrating at my sister’s house in Rhinebeck NY, my brother-in-law mentioned they were going to Wonderland Farm the next day to get their Christmas tree (and you can bet my ears perked up at hearing a delightful fantasy name like that …. Wonderland Farm …. an utterly irresistible place if ever there was one and I definitely had to go!).
Well, it turned out that Wonderland Farm was a wholesale grower of Christmas trees, meaning people like you and I could go there, walk around the grounds until we found the perfect tree for our house, chop it down, drag it to the baling machine where it got bound and gagged and tied to the top of the car, then we had to drive the 90 miles home (the whole time checking to see if the tree was still on top of the car), drag the tree into the garage, saw off an inch or two from the bottom and let the tree sit in a bucket of water for a couple of days before bringing it inside to decorate; being totally unfamiliar with this activity and having young boys who thought it would be “awesome” to act like Paul Bunyan for a couple of hours, we decided to join in the tree chopping fad – a new family tradition that lasted for about three years until the back-breaking, ass-freezing novelty wore off.
Once we stopped cutting down our home-grown trees, we weren’t quite ready to bite the bullet and go cold turkey by putting up a fake tree, so back to the local nurseries we went for a few more years until that fateful day when I was un-decorating by myself and, while struggling to get the tree out the front door to the curb, I lost my balance and fell backwards into our partially frozen juniper bush; my hands and clothes were sticky from pine sap, I was a disheveled and scratched mess from wrestling my way out of the juniper, there was a trail of pine needles from my living room to the front curb, I was exhausted and achy and I’d had quite enough …. the perfect storm, the live Christmas tree coup de grâce.
The following weekend the family hopped into the car and drove to the Christmas Tree Shop where we bought a nice big artificial tree which we lugged home and immediately tossed into the attic where it remained until the following December which turned out to be a huge mistake because when we finally opened the box, we discovered it was not the gorgeous fake evergreen we saw on display but a namby pamby shade of pink aluminum which was never going to fly in my house, so we packed it all up and returned to the Christmas Tree Shop where we were told “No refunds after 90 days of purchase”; logically, I knew that but it was still a bit of a blow because the store was to blame for the mislabeled box, so once again we found ourselves wandering around looking for a Christmas tree and we found something I’d never seen before – a skinny tree, fully decorated and lit, with its own storage bag, meant to fit neatly in the corner of a room – and we scooped that baby up and brought it home.
That skinny tree served us well but (you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you?) for a skinny tree, that damn thing weighed a ton and lugging it up from its storage spot in the basement really took its toll on Bill’s rotator cuff [we still have that skinny tree neatly packed away in its storage bag and stashed in a corner of the basement and every time I go into that back room, it scares the hell out of me because I forget it’s there and it looks like a body bag up against the wall!]; now I was asking myself what we would do for our next tree and the answer came to me while at the dentist one day and I spotted his lovely 3-foot tall fiber optic tree with twinkling lights which seemed to speak to me in Morse Code saying “Buy me and put me right by the fireplace and surround me with nutcrackers”, so that’s exactly what I did and there it served us very well for a couple of Christmases …. until I saw something while searching for stocking stuffers on Amazon that turned out to be a veritable game changer.
There on Amazon was a gorgeous tree the likes of which I had never seen before and I read all about it (not once but twice) and ordered it yet I was still surprised when a package was delivered that resembled an extremely large pizza box which contained something that looked like a wreath that melted like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz …. it sure didn’t look like a Christmas tree and I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a mistake or if Amazon had sent the wrong item …. but after laying out all the parts on the floor (which consisted of the melty-looking tree, a base and a pole), it all began to make sense and it was incredible to see it all come together; there’s no way I can adequately describe how wondrous this tree was in person or how amazingly easy it was to assemble so if anyone is interested in seeing for themselves just how easy it really is, go to Amazon.com and search for “Prextex Premium 6 ft Pre-Decorated Christmas Prelit Pop Up Tree” – but I must caution you …. you may very well want a Christmas tree or two just like this for your very own home .… and I absolutely couldn’t blame you!
NAR © 2023
This is Brenda Lee and “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree”
The Elephant's Trunk 