Category: Stories

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Christmas Tree Hunt – II – the quilted wood lot

A few years after the “Shotgun Christmas,” I was introduced to another Christmas tree hunt style. My first wife’s family was from a small island on the Maine coast. It was their tradition to go to their wood lot and hunt out a tree. They were teetotalers, so I expected no Schnapps, and nobody in that family hunted, so shotguns were out. We walked into the woods equipped with snowshoes and bow saws. This family was quite particular about their tree. Only Balsams deserved consideration, and those had to be perfect.

Every tree I pointed out seemed to have some fatal flaw I couldn’t see. In any case, the wood lot became quilted by our snowshoe tracks that afternoon. By dusk, it looked rather like one giant spruce-covered waffle.
At last, we spotted the perfect tree on the very edge of the lot. Then came the final test: would Mommy like it? I was cold and wishing for some of George’s schnapps by this time; hell, I’d have been happy to have a shotgun. I listened to them, discussing whether Mommy would like the perfect balsam.
After about forty minutes, they decided to hike through the lot to the other side to view other candidates. They scattered, and I decided to stay and watch the sun go down. As they traipsed away, I thought about my frozen feet, hands, and nose. I looked at the saw; I looked at the tree. I went to the perfect tree and started cutting. Sometime later, they traipsed back through the lot and said: “We decided to take this one,” as the tree fell. After that, I avoided spending Christmas with my in-laws.

If you haven’t read the first story in the series, it’s here: https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/86709250/posts/5031286275

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Time

Daily writing prompt
Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.
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I’m primarily self-taught on guitar and carving. But I’ve had some instruction from mentors – I can be a frustrating student. I do advanced things, but I need help with the basic stuff you are trying to teach me. Failure on the part of the student and frustration for the teacher are all a part of teaching me. It all comes from how I learn.

Timing may not be everything, but it’s one of the critical elements for me. Timing is part of success and failure. How? I need time to digest, cogitate, and absorb things. A girlfriend suggested I had a mind like a minefield surrounded by concertina wire. She thought I was merely stubborn. OK, maybe a bit. But I need the time to experiment, preferably fail privately and then make my way.

Failure does upset me. But failure doesn’t stop me from trying again. Sometimes, the success that comes after failure leaves others wondering what I’ve done. I resolve things in my own way. 

I’ve found this tendency to do it my way upsets people for whom there is only one way to do things. It has most often happened in guitar and woodcarving. Both are skills that I’ve learned through self-tuition. I once watched a very proficient carver attempt to figure out how I carved a particular piece and ended up frustrated because it made no sense to him even though my technique worked.

I had found something I wanted to carve, but the written description made no sense. And then experimented until I found my own way to do it.

People have different learning styles, and time and timing are critical to finding the pathway to success.

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Christmas Tree Hunts – I

Growing up in Manhattan, I thought the forest was the little woods in the parks. The lore of Christmas tree hunting was limited. My father, sister, and I visited a vacant lot where a gentleman from Maine set up shop every year.

Our selection procedure was direct. You arrived as early as possible due to the failing December light. Evaluating a tree after dark was a chancy proposition. You strolled the aisles of trees. Running your hands along spruce branches, you tried to determine if a tree had good color, was the right size, and the needles didn’t fall away with a light touch. If it made that cut, you took a more complete look.

The tree came out of the rack and onto the snow. My father would give it a sharp bang on the ground while my sister and I watched how many needles the tree shed. When a tree dropped too many, it was a reject. If it passed, we spun it in place and evaluated the thin spots, bushy areas, and overall shape. If it passed this test, it went onto the car and back to the apartment. End of the hunt. For life in New York City, this was as idyllic an experience as possible. A real connection to nature for the little boy to whom vacant lots and small parks represented wilderness.

Towards the end of the 1960s, I was introduced to another form of tree hunting. I was working in a small hospital in Maine. The day before Christmas Eve, the operating room Director looked at George and me. She told us to take the morning and hunt out a tree for the departmental party. 

I thought this might take an hour. George had other ideas. Climbing into his pickup truck, he quickly pulled out a nearly frozen six-pack of beer. He looked at me and said: “let’s head over to my place, get some shotguns, and see if we find anything interesting. ” OK, I told him agreeably; after all, I was on a hunt, not working, and there was free beer. 

The near-frozen beer had chilled us terribly by the time we arrived at George’s house. A few shots of peppermint schnapps were needed to defrost. By the time we hit the woods, we felt nice and warm. But, any deer in the woods easily eluded us. Around 3 PM, we realized we couldn’t find anything to shoot at; our “buzz” was severely faded, and we had no Christmas tree. 

We began seriously hunting for spruces. The woods around us were mostly pine, and we had a hike to find spruces. Eventually, we stumbled upon a small copse of balsams. Any of them would be appropriate. George looked at me and indicated a nice seven-footer. We nodded to each other but then simultaneously realized that our plan was flawed. The truck was a mile away; there was no saw. And had to be back at the hospital in about an hour.

We got our tree and got back to the hospital in time. We both had hangovers from running through snow-covered woods with a seven-foot spruce on our shoulders while coming down from a lousy peppermint schnapps high. Bea, the operating room supervisor, said nothing as she eyed the tree and took in the shredded stump. The long look she gave it told everything. “How did you boys cut this poor thing down? with your teeth?” George grinned and said, “No. Buckshot”.

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Reading the House

Daily writing prompt
Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
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I had a foundation of public speaking class in college. It covered everything but comedy. Well, it did cover funny anecdotes to use, but not actual comedy. If you are going to get up in front of an audience and perform, you need a grasp on how to turn an awkward situation into an amusing one. Or how to back away gracefully from dangerous situations by turning a mean drunk into a laughing one.

These days, there are videos on everything. But “in the day,” you watched how your betters and peers handled things. Starting in the lower tiers of Greenwich Village coffeehouses, you learned quickly what you could ignore, humor, and when to expect violence. 

Violence was rare, even in the bars. The bartender and bouncers were interested in keeping the drinks flowing in the bars and were adept at nipping issues in the bud. Maudlin audience members were famous for requesting tunes not in your repertoire. So you searched for something that fit the bill for them.

In fact, you didn’t last long in the village if you couldn’t “read the house.” It would have been so lovely if a gilt-edged guide existed, but there wasn’t, and you had to wing it.

I departed the folk music scene many years before taking the college public speaking course. Over the years, I’ve introduced many programs, delivered lectures, and made presentations. I still see a two AM crowd in Greenwich Village when I speak publically. I look for the drunk, the folks from uptown who are bored, and the smart ass who has a comment for everything.

It was good preparation.

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Exercise

Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite physical activities or exercises?
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OK, how many sets of some obscure exercise can you do? How about Hawaiian pushups? I was fooling; I thought I’d made that up and Googled it, and there is something with that name. There are all sorts of ways to torture your body into fitness. Some are even fun, I understand.

Or you could come to my house and help me stack two cords of wood for the stove. You will be disheveled, sweaty, and speckled with bark and sawdust in about an hour. But you’ve exercised every muscle and joint. In front of you stands a neat stack of wood that shows you what you have achieved.

My wood guy was busy with the landscaping part of his business and never delivered the last two cords of wood until this Friday. If he’d brought the wood any later in the month, he’d have been dropping it off in front of the Christmas Carolers. Of course, there was no help available to stack the wood. I was alone and stacked a cord daily. 

Everyone begged off helping, citing the rush to finish Christmas shopping, setting up the Tree, or other excuses. Many of these people will be groaning about needing gym memberships in a few weeks. They’ll pinch an inch of fat at the waist, complain of inactivity over the holidays, talk about all the rich food, and laud the punishment about to be inflicted by Ruth, the personal trainer at the gym.

They’ll do this while drinking my coffee and warming themselves before my woodstove. All the while blathering on about how wood heats you three times: when you cut it, stack it, and burn it. Of course, these same people were unavailable to burn fat off by stacking wood two weeks prior. But now they are moaning about how they need more exercise.

Our society has some weird disconnect between exercise and useful labor. You’ll pay gym fees, sweat, and pull muscles, but do not perform labor that achieves the same purpose. There seems to be a discreet separation, and I can’t help but wonder if it has to do with a disregard for physical labor. Physical labor is not valued, but time spent in spandex at the gym is.

This January will be different. My friend Jeff and I are working with a local gym on a new exercise system. We call it the Staxx Challange. There will be a giant jumble of 18-inch wooden rounds, each of different weights and thicknesses. The challenge is to stack them to measurements on the gym’s wall. Neatness counts. A convenient table estimates how many calories you burn and which muscle system you use and congratulates you on completing the Staxx Challenge.

After we franchise the system, my buddy and I will be rich. There is something very fulfilling in doing well while doing good!

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Character

Daily writing prompt
What is something others do that sparks your admiration?
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Like quite a few of us, I wander periodically into the world of computer games. No, not stuff like Tetris or solitaire. I like games like Civilization. For an hour or two, I can create a fake civilization. They develop from wandering tribes to transcendent overlords of their tiny world. For me, it beats lying supine and semi-comatose after ingesting drinks or drugs as a way of dealing with stress.

Years ago, I lived with a bunch of Folkies to whom playing the drinking game Cardinals was the absolute epitome of how you wasted a Friday evening – by getting wasted. So, relieving stress by playing a game is a more healthful release.

What I admire in people is overcoming addictions. Many of us have them: we smoke, drink, overeat, or have other things that form unhealthy, compulsive parts of our lives. Having struggled against mine, I understand the challenge involved and reserve respect for people who succeed in these ultimate challenges. Others worship sports figures, athletes, politicians, or the like. While their achievements may be impressive, the person who has overcome a severe addiction is more likely to garner my admiration. It’s not just a one-time victory. It’s a steady day-to-day display of character and strength.

Carving from the collection of the Shelbourne Museum

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Failure from success!

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite cartoon?
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“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” The astute words spoken by a cartoon character seem to sum up my view on how people can seize disaster from the very jaws of success. No need to contemplate human frailty or the delicate balance of natural forces. Accept that if it is corruptible, people can mess it up.

Without much effort, I can think of quotes and comments pointing out that the deep knowledge of human imperfection has long existed. Here are some favorites: 

“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”

Or my personal favorite from Theodore Roosevelt, “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”

Jimmy Buffett wrote that humans were taken out of the oven a bit too early in the baking. Not quite completely baked. That could explain our ability to perform one stupid transgression of common sense after another.

But then, as Mark Twain observed, ” there’s nothing common about common sense.”

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Tabloid

Daily writing prompt
What could you do less of?
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For many years, I worked as an anthropologist. But somewhere in the middle of those years, I took a detour into being a journalist. My paper was a neighborhood tabloid monthly. The paper’s revenue came from grant money from the city, subscriptions, and ad revenue. Its circulation was about five thousand, and it was not one of the top papers in the Boston Metro area. However, people in the community told me that the local large paper – the Journal – tended to be tossed after a day, but our News stuck around for “bathroom” reading. High praise, indeed, before the internet ruined the journalistic trades.

I guess people liked my brand of journalism, and they promoted me to editor. Anthropologists are not fond of classical rhetoric, and I bet you can imagine my preferences. The paper soon filled with interesting profiles of local artists, crafters, and the history of local institutions. Nobody accused me of yellow journalism; no lurid tales to increase circulation or astounding political revelations. The hottest it got was the several tactfully edited gossip columnists who kept everyone apprised of local rumors, deaths, births, and supposed infidelities at the senior citizen towers.

The editorial committee, however, was not happy. They wanted more snappy, “relevant,” and political stories. The political stuff wasn’t my style, and I searched for a freelancer who might cover City Hall policies towards our neighborhood. We found no one we could afford, and I soon found myself operating as a neophyte political commentator. Then, after only a month or so, I made an enemy at City Hall who threatened to have our municipal grant money cut off. The grant money was part of a Federal Block Grant, and knowing a bit about the feds from having been a “crat” myself, I counter-threatened and offered to call the contracting officer in charge of the grant.

The tit-for-tat brinksmanship continued until it landed in the City Manager’s Office. He called everyone on the editorial board with city ties and made them offers or threats they couldn’t refuse, so much for a free press.

I loved my time as a journalist but had already grown bored. So it turned out that while the Editorial Board was growing tired of me, I was hunting for a new job. And soon, I was a happy bureaucrat at the Department of the Interior.

The new editor called me up about a month later. He was in hot water because he hadn’t been careful in editing the gossip columns. Some tasty and lurid stuff went out. Circulation was up, but so were the threats of legal action.

Ahh, the plight of an editor – nobody is ever pleased.

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Stasis is Good

Daily writing prompt
What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?
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Have you heard the meme? Stasis is Good? No? Well, now you have. Stasis is Good. I’m sure it will soon be available on T-shirts or fandangles you can wear around your neck, in your hair, or whatever. I don’t think explanations are needed. So much crud is coming down these days that we wake up just hoping that the news is not worse today than yesterday – no spoilers, thank you!

I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy to forgo some good things in exchange for not seeing the world lurching further toward meltdown for a few days, weeks, or months.

Imagine a day at the beach without the big story being how our over-exploitation of the shrimp fishery means more guilt at the restaurant as you dig into that plate of shrimp scampi.

OK, now, could you repeat after me: Stasis is Good? Keep saying it while playing with your beaded fandangles – Stasis is Good. Eventually, the anxiety attack will go away. Stasis is Good!

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Morning

The woods out back are part of a sanctuary; visits by bald eagles, deer, and even the rare moose happen. I’ve never set up a wildlife camera, but the attention spent by our cats and dogs on nocturnal events implies that while we are asleep, lots must be happening outside. Even now, while it’s crisp and cold out, there is activity in the back of our lot. The rabbits, hares, squirrels, chipmunks, and birds are always active.

 In the warmer weather, I sit near the pond in the morning for meditation. But it is often interrupted by the dog and cat. They sometimes enter into a collaboration to unsuccessfully hunt for frogs. The frogs croak back at them, a form of amphibian laughter. About the time I filter out the splashes and croaks, It’s time for a second cup of coffee. And I have to shepherd cat and dog back into the house.

Later, from the side door, my brave frog hunters watch chipmunks and birds at the feeder while I read the news.