We hadn't planned to have Christmas tree this year. We had gone through several Christmas plans that had all fallen through, and quite frankly we didn't have much Christmas spirit. Then last night we went to Lowe's Home Improvement Center. The smell of those Douglas Firs took us back to childhood. Before we knew it, we were digging through to find just the perfect tree. It was a 7 foot tree for $7--irresistible!!We were reminded of all the years that we went to "Rudolf''s Pasture" in Southeast Texas to pick out our perfect tree. Rudolf’s let everyone come the weekend before Thanksgiving to tag their trees. So, we had gone several weeks before to tag a beautiful 8 foot tree as ours. Jim's car was a four door Mercury sedan--like a Taurus. We had the tree cut and a teenage boy brought it out to our car, but as he started to help Jim tie it on top, Jim told him he didn't need any help. From the backseat I could hear Erin and Austin groan. We had been waiting, it was hot, muggy, all of the windows were down, and we just wanted to get going. Jim started to tie the tree to the roof and wound the rope around through the windows--Austin whispered to Erin, "How will he get in? He won't be able to open the door?" Erin shhhhhed him. I looked around at the kids, we could see what was about to happen and the giggles started to well up inside the three of us.
Jim finally finished, pulled on the door handle--then he looked at us with an embarrassed grin. We all howled with laughter--the teenage boy who had brought our tree--just walking by from tying someone else's tree to their car---was also laughing. Jim had this silly grin--backed up and dived through the window. It took us about 10 minutes to get him out of my lap, turned around and into the driver's seat but he was in the car--Austin asked--"Hey Dad, how are we going to get out?" Jim, still laughing said, "Well we will worry about that when we get back to Beaumont!"
