David Nelson, Author & Cowboy Poet | PALS: Christmas Tree: To Decorate or Nor to Decorate

David Nelson, Author & Cowboy Poet | PALS: Christmas Tree: To Decorate or Nor to Decorate: “A Christmas Story: To Decorate or Not to Decorate” © I haven’t decided if I will decorate for Christmas this year. Last year on Decemb...

Christmas Tree: To Decorate or Nor to Decorate

“A Christmas Story: To Decorate or Not to Decorate” ©

I haven’t decided if I will decorate for Christmas this year. Last year on December 24^th, I promised I’d never do it again.

The seven-foot tree that cost me nearly $100 lost lots of needles driving home from the tree-getting place. Earlier that day, I’d spent two hours dragging boxes of ornaments, tinsel, lights and the tree stand from the attic. Twice I slipped on the pull-down stairs and cut my ankle in two different areas. The extra large Band-Aids stopped the bleeding.

It was already dark when I pulled my pick-up into the driveway. The motion lights illuminated my path to the garage where the stand was ready to accept my Douglas fir tree. I loosened the four screw-like holders by turning each one no less than fifty-seven times. They were in the closed position so the stand could fit into the original box. My tennis elbow flared up a bit.

Singing “Silent Night,” I walked back to the truck to slide the tree base into the stand. Crap, I thought. It didn’t fit. The tree’s circumference was too large for the base. I had to trim my seven-foot tree to a spot where the diameter would fit the stand.

My head hit the door jam in the crawl space under my shop when I was looking for my chainsaw. Something wet started running off my bald head and down the side of my face. I had cut my head entering the thirty-inch high opening. I wiped my face and smeared something red onto my shorts. The stain was a brighter red than the previous blood trails from my ankle injuries earlier. I used another extra large Band-Aid for my head.

Back at my pickup, I kept walking over to the motion lights so they would turn on and I could see exactly where to cut the tree. After some fifteen attempts to start that damn chainsaw, it finally cranked. My tennis elbow became more painful and my shoulder began to throb from my rotator cuff repair earlier that year. My fingers nearly stuck together from the sap and I had difficulty releasing them from the trigger on the saw.

A thump was heard when eighteen-inches of tree fell to the driveway. I shimmied. I pushed. I wiggled that five and a half foot tree into the stand. The tree base was so close to fitting into the stand. The ball-peen hammer dented the bottom of the stand slightly when I finally hammered it into place.

The throbbing in my left thumb from where I’d hit it with the hammer was tolerable. That pain was nothing compared to my elbow each time I turned the screws into the tree base. My shoulder didn’t hurt at all dragging that tree down the sidewalk into the front door. That’s because I’d used my other arm. There was a carpet of needles on the sidewalk behind me and into the living room. It sure enough smelled like Christmas.

Ten minutes later the scent of pine needles was replaced with the smell of 10% ethanol gasoline. I washed my hands in it to eliminate the sap. There was a little poof when I lit a cigar. The singed hair on the back of my hand fell to the floor and I noticed a small burn spot on my hand. Another Band-Aid covered the blister. I figured if I was going to be dumb, I had to be tough.

I spent the next two hours in the garage untangling lights and testing each one trying to locate the dead one. When one light goes out they all go out. I sipped on bourbon and smoked my stogie.

My wife, “Trixie” met me in the middle of a three thousand light string. The very last one was loose. She plugged the string into the electrical outlet and stood back up. “What happened to your eyebrows? They’re gone.”

More singed hair fell to the garage floor as I wiped my barren frontal bone. Oops. Moments later I looked into the bathroom mirror and smiled. I was void of eyebrows. Now, there was a bloodstain on my face and side of my head, an extra large Band-Aid on my baldhead, and another on the back of my hairless hand. I thought it was pretty funny.

The Christmas CD of the group, Alabama must have comforted out cats. They came out from under the bed and into the living room to help us decorate. I got another glass of bourbon.

Initially Trixie and I asked each other where one ornament and another was purchased during our twenty-five years of marriage. We took our time and talked of trips we had taken across America. It was our tradition to buy Christmas ornaments wherever we visited. The throbbing in my left thumb and the blister on the back of my right hand intensified. I sipped more bourbon.

The damn cats kept lying on the ornament boxes and shredding the worn out tissue paper that protected the trinkets. I managed to break three ornaments when I lost concentration while pushing the cats off the coffee table. It seemed like the Christmas music got louder.

After some forty-five minutes Trixie and I stopped talking about our special ornaments and were more focused with hanging them on the tree. I turned off the blaring music. Three times of hearing the same songs was enough. Twice I had to pull tinsel from the cats’ paws. “Peaches” scratched my hand and forearm. Darn it. I was bleeding again in more spots and I was out of the extra large Band-Aids. There were now two medium sized on my left forearm.

Then the critiquing began. We walked around the tree at least ten times each. Following our Christmas tradition, Trixie pointed to the tree’s bald spots. I didn’t care. I bumped my throbbing thumb and drug my blistered hand across branches to hook ornaments in places that Trixie said were barren. And then I quit. I sat down and glared at Peaches. She ran off into the bedroom carrying a small wooden ornament in her mouth.

 No fewer than nineteen times I must have heard the following statements. “How does this look? Is this straight? Do you see any empty spots?”

I rubbed the top of my head in disgust and made it bleed again. I sat on the couch giving pressure to the wound with a paper towel. My shoulder pain intensified and my elbow hurt from pushing down on my head. The other cat did a dive off my legs and I was scratched and bleeding in a new spot. I didn’t care. I finished my bourbon and fell into a trance.

Trixie turned off all the interior lights and went outside to admire our work. I tagged along. It was a pretty sight. I noticed how quiet it was walking on the sidewalk over the bed of pine needles.

We returned to the inside, turned the lamps on and Trixie’s eyes were fixed staring at the tree. She looked at me and said, “The tree is crooked.”

Our divorce is final in two weeks.

David Nelson, Author & Cowboy Poet | PALS: Fifty Coats of Grey: A Spoof

David Nelson, Author & Cowboy Poet | PALS: Fifty Coats of Grey: A Spoof: Fifty Coats of Grey The crunching of the gravel under her tires was muffled by the sounds of the trailer skirting flopping in the wind....

Fifty Coats of Grey: A Spoof

Fifty Coats of Grey

The crunching of the gravel under her tires was muffled by the sounds of the trailer skirting flopping in the wind. Ana was looking for the exquisite bed & breakfast in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee called Abode & Beyond. She was to meet Christian Grey for a romantic weekend.

Instead, she was lost. The moisture on her lip was not from thoughts of some sexual seduction, but from the sweltering heat and heavy air that hung in that holler. She drove there by mistake. She was lost. The road narrowed as she approached the trailer owned by the local small town drunk.

There was no place to turn around on that graveled pathway. Instead, she was forced to negotiate the Mercedes past weeds that lapped against her windows and over rotted limbs that lay in the lane. She wondered if Christian would be upset if she scratched or dented the new car he bought for her a couple weeks prior.

She was reminded of the Burma Shave signs that once dotted America’s highways when she was about one hundred yards away from the grey trailer. One read, “Yankees and strangers will be shot on site.” Another hand-written posting was painted in red. “Killer dogs bees up ahead.” Ana wiped her lip and came to a complete stop to read a sign that was broken and hung sideways. She tilted her head sharply to the left and downward to read it. “Get yer ass out a cheer now.”

The fighting roosters screamed from their cages and the snarling pit bull dogs slobbered on the car’s fenders when they circled the vehicle. The dogs weren’t phased a bit stalking over the thousands of empty Bush beer cans that littered the drive. They were waiting for a leg to touch the ground so an attack could begin.

The rapid whopping sound from the loose skirting disappeared when the gun blast was fired. Ka-boom! It was a twelve-gage shotgun that he fired from the rotted, wooden porch landing.

Uncle Bubba Bobby held the weapon propped against his right hip and kept it pointed upward. He reached into the left pocket on his bibbed overalls and grabbed a half-empty beer. After chugging the remaining contents he let out a loud belch that made the rooters jump with fright.

One of the pit bull dogs yelped when it was hit in the head by an empty and crushed beer can thrown from the lopsided landing above. Bubba Bobby belched again. “Just who the hell are you? Why are you on my property? Are youins from the county again?”

Ana had to stretch upward to reach the partially opened car window. Through the two-inch opening she yelled out, ”Excuse me. I’m lost. I’m looking for Abode & Beyond. Can you help me?”

Lowering his weapon toward the ground Uncle Bubba Bobby stepped down off the wobbly porch. He tried to kick one dog in the side to make a path away from the car’s front door. He leaned forward toward the narrow opening of the window and smiled through the gaps that once contained teeth. “What’s an abode? I ain’t never heard of no such. It was a bad ideal for youin to drive up here in that purdy car. Lucky fer you that y’all didn’t stir up a waspers nest in the ground.”

Ana felt uncomfortable with Bubba Bobby’s eyes glaring at her cleavage seen through the opening of her blouse. Some fifteen-minutes earlier she had unbuttoned the top button in anticipation of seeing Christian. Her motive was to tease him when they first embraced. Now, she was being ogled by an old, shirtless codger who had globs of fat hanging out the sides of his overalls.

“Um, um the place I’m looking for is a bed and breakfast. The name of it is Abode & Beyond. It’s somewhere off Tuckaleechee Road. Do you know of it?”

Bubba slapped his left thigh and gave out with a cackle. “Why, heck, purdy lady, I’ll fix y’all some breakfast and you can sleep rat cheer fer the weekend if youins want to. Now, now don’t get scared, I’s justa joshing with ya.”

He wiped his nose with his left forearm and opened another beer. “Did ya see Troutfish Terry’s business out on the highway? It bees called, “Used Tires & Jesus Sayings Carved On Wood.” Tuckaleechee is that thar road next to Troutfish’s store.

Ana touched the electric window switch and lowered the glass just far enough that she no longer had to strain to talk through the opening. “Well, my friend Christian flew in yesterday in his helicopter. He said if I got lost I could call him and meet him where he landed. Do you know where he might have landed? Maybe I could find that easier.”

“Why, hell fire, lady there ain’t no cell phone service back in these here parts. I heared a chopper yesterday. I figered somebody was a being hunted for pot plants or some hiker needed saved. Speaking of saved, are youins saved? Have y’all found Jesus,” He asked and pointed to a sign at the front of his trailer.

Ana peered through the windshield and squinted. There was a three-foot wide by five-foot long sign with the Ten Commandments printed on it. A few feet away was a sign that read, “Jesus Is Lord.”

Her stare was interrupted when Bubba Bobby spoke. “I gots me a regular phone inside and you bees welcome to come in and call your friend if ya wants to.” He crushed the empty can and winged it at one of the dogs that darted to the left and missed getting hit. The can lay unattended with the others. “Hey, what do ya think about my paint job on the ole homestead? It must be about the fiftieth time I painted it. I always use grey. It’s purdy, ain’t it?”

Ana pondered Bubba Bobby’s offer to use the phone. She place her hand on the car door handle and… (To be continued)

Questions to consider:

·      Will Ana fall in love with Bubba Bobby?

·      Will Christian rescue her and buy the property in order to convert it into an aluminum recycling plant?

·      Will Ana be saved and find Jesus at the “Second Baptist Church of Hell Fire and Condemnation?”

Stay tuned for the continuing saga.