I remember when..
The day finally came to put up the Christmas tree. You felt like it was never going to get there. At least not soon enough!
The excitement was just about more than a kid could stand.
Dad would announce to my brother and I, that it was Christmas tree day. The three of us would get
in the truck and head for Missouri Market.
There standing in front of the store, up against the windows, were all those yummy smelling christmas trees.
Pine, Spruce, cedar, long needle, short needle…tall, short, scrawny..wonderful…smelly trees, all bound in twine.
Just waiting for you to pick the best one.
It was my job from my mom, to remind dad that it doesn’t have to be the biggest in the world, and that she just got new linoleum in the dining room, and she didn’t want to be sweeping up needles all the time.
So of course my dad choose the biggest he could find, and my brother and I helped get it into the back of the truck, where we rode home back there..proudly holding our awesome tree.
Luckily mom wasn’t home, when we got back, so we wrangled the tree into the house, found the stand and got it all ready.
Dad put the tree in, the three of us stood back and looked proudly at it, thinking what a great job we had done, as it very ever so slowly fell over, and shook needles all over.
So my dad decided he would just nail the stand to the floor.
There was no way then, that the tree could fall over.
Oh my mom about killed him, her brand new linoleum…but that is another story.
The tree reached clear to the ceiling…we choose a pine, it smelled so good…and it was huge. Next came the fluffing…then dad would put on the lights and angel hair. Now the bubble lights…which were the most magical things I had ever seen. Then my brother and I added the ornaments, while dad watched and gave instructions on the proper hanging of each one.
You have to know we were doing a lot of eye rolling then.
Then at last, time for the tinsel. According to my dad, you could not just toss some on…it had to be placed strand by strand. Last but not least, was the star…my grandfather had given it to me for my first Christmas a star that was amazing….it had on the outside plastic spheres, with gold star points, the inside had a tube that had colors on film, inside that was a small white light bulb. As the bulb got warm, the colored tube would spin, and send colors all over the walls and ceiling.
Then came the time to turn off the lights, and observe our work…
It was amazing….our beautiful tree….that year mom let us put newspapers down on her new floor, and eat our supper watching the tree.
We had was one of those new pot pie thingys..macaroni and cheese.
So many wonderful memories…I do remember when….