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Texas Agriculture Archive

December 5, 2003

Each year, Mel has a hard time understanding the complexity of the touching, smelling, and appraising that goes into finding just the right Christmas tree. To him, a tree's a tree. But it simply isn't true. More than one stop and the rejection of hundreds is necessary before finding the perfect one. A lot of our conversations, when the time rolls around, go like this...

"What's wrong with this one?"

"It has a flat side."

"This un looks purdy good," he'll say.

"Kind of mangy looking."

Mel will shrug and continue the search.

"Now here's a nice one."

"Nope. It has two tops."

"Now tell me what's wrong with this row right here?"

"Too short, too tall, too thin, too small."

"Now lookey here at this un. Perfect in ever way. What about it?"

I looked the tree over. "It lacks something...can't put my finger on it."

"Well just exactly what kind of tree are you looking for?"

"I don't know, but I'll know it when I see it."

"You'll know it when you see it?"

"Yeah...kind of like when I found you."

Mel really prefers to cut his own. The problem is, my husband's idea of a Christmas tree is a tree that dwarfs the one at the Rockefeller Center. We go to the woods, and he scouts for Old Growth timber.

One year, the two of us managed to drag a mighty tree to the truck. Mel was pleased as punch with it. I suggested he cut it up and build a log cabin instead. But there was no dissuading my husband.

Later, he hooked a log chain onto the tree and drug it into our garage. The next challenge was fitting the huge stump into the little tree stand. I heard a loud noise. It was Mel, working it over with a chain saw.

Next, I heard him banging around in the attic, dragging out boxes of Christmas lights and ornaments. He strung all the lights end to end—about 300 yards—and wound them round and round the Goliath tree and plugged them in (later we'd have to have an electrician come and upgrade because he put so many outside lights, it kept throwing the breaker).

"Now, it's time to trim the tree," he announced. He began digging through the big box of Christmas ornaments collected over almost 30 years and decided some were ready for the junk heap.

"Thur lookin' purdy dilapidated, like 'is li'l drummer boy. Looks like arthritis done set up in his knees," Mel commented. "An' this here angel looks like she's had her wings clipped. An' maybe somebody took a bite out of the gingerbread man."

I stood back and looked up to the top of the monstrous tree. I could have used binoculars.

"Maybe we could persuade the Baylor basketball team to come over and decorate it for us," I told him.

Oh yes, aside from big, Mel's only criteria for a Christmas tree is one that will make good crappie habitat. He always sinks the castaway tree in his favorite fishing hole.

This year when the urge to hunt a tree strikes, think I'll sneak out and go it alone!