information, but to pointed query you find that the trees have been cut since the middle of November, and it’s already well into the second week of December. Thanking him for the inside info on the life expectancy of your Tannenbaum, you turn back, test a leaf as he has just shown you, and it pops between your fingers. You test seven other trees. They all pop. You love the advertised price for these gorgeous Virginia Pines; $14.95 (plus several dollars tax, of course). They smell wonderful, too, and you imagine your prize perfuming the air for the next month. Old-Tyme Christmas Cheer at fifty cents a day. Can’t beat that!
You again begin to tromp around through slimy grass and mud; and you’re suddenly very glad you headed out before noon. How discombobulating it would be, you muse, to be out here beneath bright, 100-watt bulbs after dark, when all the trees look the same, or all look like one gargantuan and virtually unassailable Conifer Monstrosity. In the daytime, even if it’s cloudy, you can clearly see the grotesque yellowing of the particular needles, the great ugly holes that couldn’t possibly be filled with ornaments or lights of any flourish...and the ants.
Ants? Not aphids? No. Well, there are aphids on some trees. Your tree last year had a few here and there, but a spritz or two of the ol’ anti-aphid formula got rid of them for the most part, and you were happy. But this year there’s been lots of rain. Torrents, actually, and the temp outside, a clement 72° F, isn’t exactly Christmas Weather.
“Lets pull this one for you,” the man says unexpectedly as he yanks a tree you’ve been eying away from its heavy wire holder. “You’ll be out here all day if we don’t.”
You go along with it, deciding the guy isn’t trying to be rude. The tree looks pretty good. But you look closer after he has dragged it to the cutting table, where he will quickly square it with a chainsaw. In the nick of time, you spy a whole colony of fire ants coursing up and down the bark! The man sees your anguish.
“Here,” he offers as he manhandles your baby back off the table and proceeds to bang its trunk into the asphalt five, six, seven times with brutish force. “There!” he says with an air of accomplishment. “Got rid of ninety percent of ’em right there! Ha!”
“We got to get us some bug spray out here,” another worker mentions as he walks by. You watch the parking lot turn a golden brown and then begin to sort of undulate. You then step in very close to the base of the pine, to get the best look you can. There are at least five hundred of the infernal insects left on the tree! You suddenly imagine seeing the little happy things dancing and singing carols around a limb decorated with gossamer dragonfly wings. They’re exchanging presents of grains of sand and various other building materials, and eating cake and cookie crumbs....
You shake yourself out of the weird reverie which will soon seal your fate with this tree in sudden absence of the required savvy. You quickly set your face as flint, and halt the man just as he fires up the chainsaw and is about to square.
“I can’t bring a nest of fire ants into my house,” you state authoritatively above the roaring din, and the guy gets a look on his countenance somewhere between disgust with you for being so pernickety, embarrassment turning into a who-cares attitude, and fear that he’s about to lose you as a customer. It’s two and a half weeks before Christmas, and both his lots are still full of dead and dying Christmas Trees. And he’s not the only vendor in town. He’s challenged by at least fifteen other full lots each sporting two to three hundred trees. And then there’s the people who prefer the artificial variety!
You don’t care for this crew as much as you did for the lone backwoods fellow last year who, when you asked him when the trees had been cut, he answered
“Oh, all ’bout the same time.”
“But when were they cut?” you rephrased, thinking he misunderstood you.
“Well, all ’bout the same day,” he muttered.
You had paused, and felt an amused smile break over your lips, which you tried to hide in order not to make him feel belittled.
“So,” you pressed him, “what date were they cut?”
“Um...Townsgimn’,” he mumbled.
“Uh, what was that?”
“Oh, ’bout, ahemmmm...Thanksgivin’,” he restated as he dropped his head and turned away.
Anyway, this year you’ve looked thoroughly over their first lot, and the trees all seemed to be dying. You’ve ambled over to their other lot, and the trees all seemed to be dying. But you roam around in that one for an extended amount of time, and that’s where you nearly buy the portable ant bed. You’re not hungry, but you’re losing energy nonetheless, so, in desperation, you wander back over to the first lot—the one you left because, for a second there, you got to where you couldn’t see the trees for the forest. You’re back now, and these beauties have either just been placed there in your absence, or are in far better condition than the graveyard you’ve just exited. You spy one tree resting in a large puddle of water; a real plus! If not for the large hole on its one side, the canary-yellow needles and the vibrant colony of ants nesting in its limbs, you’d take it.
Bewildered, you turn around a few times. Hey! You almost immediately spy one you like! It’s a striking, rotund seven-footer. You know because you’ve brought along your trusty tape measure, which the guy on the floor, so to speak, runs over and holds at the apex while you drag it down to the foot. Yep, that’s the one. It’s dark green, lush, straight and, well, ant-free. You know this by kicking the trunk very hard with your toe several times, and then getting down on your hands and knees to watch for the terrible little creatures, which don’t appear. You’ll take it!
You’re proud of yourself again this year. You’ve once more entered the hallowed Halls of Americana and purchased yet another beauty of a Tree. But not only that, you’ve done it with a sure-fired savvy and a quick eye for shysters who’ll unload any tree on the lot off on you. Any tree at all.
* * * *
“Good mornin’! Pick any tree at all, sir! Two full lots. Hey! Here’s a nice one right ch’here! Prettiest one we got!”
THE GIFT, by Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen
I have been an unofficial elf most of my life, helping people quietly whenever they came across my path. I also hope to help others...somehow...through my writing, but on that early evening one December, my elven gifts were the ones apparently being called on.
Initially I had no more intention to intervene than anyone else on the train platform. He stood near the exit steps of the elevated train in the Frankford section of Northeast Philadelphia. He had the prerequisite ruddy jowls, cascading white curly hair reaching to his shoulders and covering his lower face and chest in a sumptuous beard. His Santa suit looked authentic, and I smiled as he got off the El two cars down from mine with other rush hour travelers.
I headed for the exit still smiling when the jolly old geezer approached one passenger then another as they hurried past, avoiding him as he called out: “Excuse me? Could you help me?”
Flurries of booted feet, hunched overcoats and tightly clutched handbags. He delayed a man in a long gray woolen coat.
“Excuse me, sir? Won’t you please help me?”
The man laughed, heading down exit steps, throwing “Go home, Pops. You’re drunk!” over his shoulder.
The old fellow stood on the platform, perplexed and appearing indignant at the man’s
