Okay, now it is official. I am one of those goddamn Californians I have spent my life railing against.
No, I didn’t join a commune. No I didn’t sign a legalize pot initiative in front of Safeway. And, no I didn’t buy an overpriced beach bungalow and learn to surf.
What I did do, for the very first time in my life, is purchase a “live” Christmas tree. There. I said it. I’ve sent it into the cyber-void and cannot gracefully take it back.
I have spent the last 61 years supporting the Boy Scouts, or the Baptist Youth Fellowship, or, on several occasions, braving the wilds, with boot and saw, to gather my own feral holiday shrub from the great outdoors.
And, with the exception of the wild and unwashed variety, it has become harder and harder to find a tree that looks like a tree, and not some mutant seedling that was carefully groomed to fit into that giant pencil sharpener gizmo that turns it into the picture perfect little clone of someone’s over-vivid imagination.
Before, you could poke around in the back of the lot (behind the tiny, poorly lit trailer house) where they kept the bastard children and the severed limbs. There you could find a tree that was just asymmetrical enough to be a second class citizen and too thin of branch to qualify for the shaper-shredder. You would drag it out into the light and ask, “how much for this one?” and the overdressed and unshaven lot troll would glean some crumbs from his stubble and point out that it had a bald spot on one side and didn’t come with a stand. You would claim it was just what you wanted, he would offer you a deal on a fifteen foot Norway Spruce that was normally a hundred bucks, you would stand your ground, he would cave and it was yours for ten or twelve bucks. Onto the roof of the car and he was glad to be rid of both you and that ugly goddamn tree.
This year, apparently, the Christmas tree union came down hard at the bargaining table and, as a result, the price of any tree came close to a ten day holiday south of the border. At least here in Insanity Cruz the crap trees started at about thirty-five bucks and shot up like a two stage rocket from there. But there amongst the groomed, sculpted and bundled denizens of Holiday Hell was a wee bairn of a tree in a three gallon bucket. Not a standard “christmas” tree of pine or spruce, it is a cypress tree. It looks rather like a four foot, wind swept cedar, a long feathery bower with a whimsical tilt to its top and it was only $29.95.
Throw on some lights and the odd decoration and there is no mistaking its purpose. Now if I can just keep the goddamn thing alive for the next 364 days (out on the deck…) I will use it again and get the price averaged down to my unrealistic standards.
And to all a good night.
