chaos7

Friday, December 16, 2005

Scrooge Conversion

I share a holiday homestead with Ebenezer Scrooge but I'm working to convert his curmudgeonly ways. Hopefully I won't have to enlist the three ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future to do it. That could get ugly.

Ol' Eb drove Willem and I to the east side of Bastrop to the Loma Alta Christmas Tree Farm last Thursday. I had a feeling that the trip would be challenging but I was determined to share with him the experience of killing our own chosen sapling in a pine-scented forest of hundreds.


















As I'm ho-hoing away in the back seat with baby, Eb was looking for the landmarks for the turn. Needless to say, we ended up in Smithville and Eb was one pissed miser. He couldn't understand why we didn't just drive to the neighborhood grocery store and snag one of the dried up twigs out front instead of going on this extended hunt. After a bit of fussin' and fightin' we found the joint and bounced our way down the dirt road to the headquarters. We were greeted by a man who could easily play Ned Flanders in the made for TV movie and his Australian Shepherd, Barney. Barney had one bluish eye that Eb thought was sans vision. Faux Ned gave Eb a hand saw and sent us off into the forest. Since the hayride wasn't in commission, we stayed close to the road knowing full well that we'd have to schlep our tree of choice back to base camp. Surprisingly, Eb quickly embraced the hunt and followed baby and I into the manicured thicket. A sparrow hawk sat at the top of one particular tree that Eb claimed was "the one" because the bird was some sort of sign. I would've been game for it except that the tree was 10 feet tall and I was sure the strangely calm bird would rip our eyes out and steal the baby. We did finally manage to choose a bushy fella and, on my command, Eb begrudginly got on his knees and began to saw. About five minutes later, he was cursing from underneath the branches. Not wanting the fun to come to a screeching halt, I handed over the kiddo and made a go of it but damn thing was impossible to sever. I marched out into the road and summoned "Ned" and with little effort, he cut the tree from the ground. It was easy to imagine him with the muscle bound body of Flanders underneath his flannel and raincoat. After the dead bristles were violently shaken from the tree by a shaking machine and it was fed in to a really big mesh bag, we secured it to the top of the truck and took it home. I grinned to myself when Eb said that next year he wanted to gather up a group of friends to make the trip with us, pack some warm toddys and make a Saturday of it. One small step for wifey, one giant leap for Christmas's to come.


















P.S. Baby loves the tree!

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