I really wanted to burn it.
Seriously, what’s better than tossing a Christmas tree – seven days dry and brittle like a bone – onto a roaring bonfire? That’s right: nothing.
That poor thing would have lit up like a six-foot long highway flare: snap, crackle, whoosh, and then gone, just like that. They would have seen the glow from Phoenix.
But the Nordic Warrior Queen said no – it’s not safe.
I tried to argue. What’s so unsafe about a three-story tall pillar of fire in your backyard? After all, it rained last week, and most of the houses around here have tile roofs. So what if a few glowing embers rain down on the town of Catalina?
But after three decades of marital bliss, you learn to pick your battles, so I wrapped the dead tree in a big white plastic bag bought specifically for that purpose and drove it down to the mass tree-grave down in Oro Valley, lamenting the $100 I’d blown on the damned thing just three weeks before.
I spotted the place by the huge mountain of dead trees – Douglas Firs, Norway Spruces, White Pines, Frasers, Nobles, and Balsams. It was like some sort of pine tree Auschwitz, its victims ready for the crematorium.
Near the towering pile sat a lumberjack of a man, sprawled out in a tortured lawn chair and reading a People magazine. He stood as I pulled into the lot, and I realized he must be seven feet tall at least. He reminded me of the Lurch the Butler from the Addam’s Family. Except this one was wearing plaid.
I parked right next to the pile to make it easier to unload. As I stepped out of the truck, Lurch was standing not two feet away, looking down at me. “You want to get rid of your tree?” he growled.
I tried to think of something witty to say, but came up with nothing more than a feeble, “Yes.”
“We have needy kids,” he said. “You put your donation in the bucket. Over there,” and he pointed with his three foot long arm at an Ice Cream pail sitting on a small table next to his People magazine.
Without waiting for a response, he strode to the back of my truck and dropped the gate. WHAM! I was afraid he might break my truck with his unnatural strength, and started to tell him to be more careful, but just then he looked up and stared at me, as if daring me to say something.
“No plastic,” he warned, and grabbing the tree by the base with one of his ham-sized fists, he stripped away the white plastic bag and shoved one end into his back pocket; from where I stood, it looked as if Lurch had the world’s longest piece of toilet paper hanging from his ass.
I couldn’t help it: I started to laugh.
“What’s funny,” he said, and with a mighty heave, lifted the tree from the back of my truck and tossed it high atop the growing pile of pine.
“Ummm…never mind,” I said, and giggled nervously. Lurch stood staring at me for a minute, like there might be something wrong with me, and then pointed again at the donation bucket. “We have needy kids.”
As he stood behind my truck, watching me quietly (with five feet of white plastic bag hanging from his back pocket), I walked over and shoved a few ones through a slot in the top of the bucket, which had once contained a gallon of Blue Bunny Vanilla Bean.
His People magazine was folded back to a photo of a young Barbara Streisand, looking alluring in a red sequined dress, and I wondered if Lurch spent his free time (that not spent at the tree cemetery, anyway) eating Blue Bunny Ice Cream while watching reruns of Yentl and The Way We Were.
As I got back into my truck, it seemed that Lurch was reading my mind, as he scowled at me, impatient to get back to his magazine. Despite this, I couldn’t resist a question. “What do you do with them all?” I said, pointing up at the pile of dead trees.
In response, Lurch only smiled grimly. “Have a nice day, sir,” he said, and turned away.
As I drove out of the lot, I looked in my rearview mirror to see him walking back to his lawnchair.
The long plastic tail still hung from the back of his pants.