Stone Jackson's Guide to Christmas Tree Huntin', Wranglin', an' Choppin'

or the day I almost died from exhaustion and destroyed the forest. True story.

Last Weekend the family and I made our yearly trek to the Christmas Tree lot to choose the sacrificial,um, lucky bugger that had the honor of being chosen as the Stone Jackson family tree.

Our first stop was the Red Barn, a lovely place complete with , you guessed it, a Red Barn, working train, and many trees. The first thing on the agenda was to ride the train. It wasn't enough to ride in that bad boy, oh no, Stone Jackson Junior wanted to be one of the select few that got to ride in the caboose . This sort of thing is grand if you belong to the lollipop guild or are under the age of 10. Me, being the strappin' mountain of muscle and lean mass that I am, had to scrunch down and in, legs sticking out of either window as the train pulled away from the station. I saw more than one horrified mother trying to shield her child's eyes as she muttered, "it's not polite to stare at the abomination, Timmy."

One excruciating lap around the circuit and we pulled again into the main station. I shuddered trying not to feel too much like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes as he is being Ape handled for transport and processing. Having done my penance for whatever it was that the Good Lord felt he needed to punish me for, I straightened up my Stetson, stretched my legs, and made my way to the free drink stand. My lovely bride scored herself a cup of coffee, while the kids and I slurped down our delicious mini chocolate milks. Having been enriched by the Vitamins A,D, and other nutrients, we made our way to the trees.

What proceeded next is a journey of epic proportions. We walked up down up down the rows of trees, trying to find the perfect specimen. "This one is too short... too dead ... to leafy ... too spotty ..." We started to sound like the pain in the ass bear from the children's story Old Hat\New Hat ...



After 2 hours of fruitless searching, we cut our losses and went to the next place.

"Sorry, my dear, but I am just not feeling it here. Let's not settle. Let's go elsewhere." What were these strange words coming from my lips?

The next stop was a placed called the Tree Wise Men . The 3 sage males mentioned in the ad were none other than Larry, Curly, and Moe. We hemmed and hawed, but after 45 minutes and 1 short brutal portapottie visit later, we moved on. Our tree quarry still eluded us.

In a funk, we steered the Stone Jackson Wagon home. Wait, did mine eyes deceive me? "Make that right up ahead. Now, woman!" A new tree lot had appeared next door and they were open. The hunt was still on!

A small scale Amtrak train model was out rusting in the elements. A weird post apocalyptic panorama like something out of Fallout 3 came to my head. “Get it together man!” I whispered to myself.

I introduced myself and my brood to the 2 old guys that were working in the place and exclaimed, “we’re here for a tree. An epic tree. One large and manly enough for my abode, yessiree bob!”

*blink* “We have trees that way.”

“Much obliged neighbor. Let’s go kids!" I snagged an underwhelming file saw that looked like something I’d use to pick my teeth after a good meal, and trudged down the mud.

We searched for that son of a bitch every which way. Up, down, left, right, sideways. I finally spotted one that I felt was impressive enough for my lovely wife. Bear in mind that we have 10 foot ceilings at our highest point only , yet my lovely bride had it stuck in her head that anything shorter of substratosphere height was not going to cut it this year.

“This is it,” I exclaimed excitedly.
A doubtful looked crossed her face. “I’m just not sure…”
I glared at her. As the tree was literally on the side of the road, it was covered in mud. Pete, one of the old guys that worked there ran over one of the lower branches as he drove by in a tractor looking for people and trees to pull back to base camp.

“He just ran over our tree!” she yelled.
Exhausted to the point of failure and like a punch drunk boxer late in the 12th round, I somehow stayed vertical. “Look here woman. THIS IS OUR TREE!”

That being that, I tossed my coat on the mud, got down on my knees and started to saw with all my might. Normally, all I would have had to do was to squint at the damn thing and the tree would have sawed itself and offered to turn any splinters into toothpicks for my pleasure. However, after 4 hours of tree hunting, I had reached my limit. I would have to go at this mano a mano. I can understand why tree farms don’t let wild eyed males run around their property with chain saws in their hands, but this rust covered gumless piece of shit hacksaw wasn’t sharp enough to shave the ass of a hog with. I gritted down and kept going.

“You want me to take over for you” my lovely wife asked . I pictured myself pistol whipping the manager of my local bank for some imagined misdeed against me as I did not want to quell her enthusiasm. “I’m good … thanks” I gritted in pain.

*hack hack hack hack* *cramp* *groan* *teeth grinding*

And here is where I segueway to tell you about my trademarked Stone Jackson technique for chopping down a tree. You make an incision with a saw at the base of the tree, once you get to about 5/6 of the way through and have dulled or destroyed all the teeth on the subpar saw that has been given to you, drop that piece of bent tin to the ground, take a wide sumo stance, legs akimbo, thrust out with each palm, and you push that son of a bitch over with gusto. Remember to yell “Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” before you do so. The poor sap that is being smothered by that mammoth of a tree you just showed who is boss, just might appreciate the heads up!

“Don’t do it” my wife intones.
“Bah!” I am so tired, I am beyond caring. When this exhaustion hits. There is no God. There is nothing else. It’s you and IT and IT must fall. *Grunt*

*SNAP* I feel the reverb in my hands and look down . That satisfying snapping sound is a beauty to my ears. I look down, there is a huge, we’ll call it a bark like hang nail on my vic, er, tree. Damn it!

Pete comes around and he helps me to hoist my kill, um tree onto the back of the trailer.
“Want a ride?”
“Nah. I’ll walk!” I gingerly amble towards the front of the place to pay for the tree.

With a chagrined look on my face I ask the guys if they have a chainsaw on the premises to help me “square away” the base. They do. Zip, zip and we are done.

We hoist this massive timber on to my 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee. I pray to the good lord that my 10 year old pusillanimous drive engine makes up the hill to my home. Somehow, it does.

The wife and I pull the thing down and try to impale it on our Christmas tree stand. That’s a negative Ghost Rider. This thing’s trunk has the diameter of a big honking leg of ham. I make the trek to Wal-Mart and get the biggest base they have. After much cursing and even MORE sawing we somehow get the base on. The next task is to hose the tree down to get rid of any extra dead needles. I dig through my cavernous shed and find a hose to reconnect to the spigot outside. I hose down the Green Ogre for a few minutes. My thoughts lost in the clouds, I let the hose go instead of gently putting it down on the ground. The damn thing lands on the handle and sprays me from face to toe. I have ice cold water dripping down my nose, barrel chest, groin, and legs. As if I wasn’t already freezing my nuts off. Son of a bitch ! I drag the tree back into the garage and let it dry overnight …

The next day while my wife is at work, I bring the tree up by myself and proudly hoist in its place of honor. That I was able to do so while avoiding a hernia is a testament to my prodigious strength and good luck. This is not so much a tree but something that a well oiled Scotsman would use for the Caber Toss in the Highlander Games …

My wife gets home and looks at it. She lifts a single branch and thousands of dead needles come to land at our feet. “Did you hose this off?”

“Yes, m’am. Nearly froze my nuts off doing so.”
“You sure? Look at these needles?”
There is no denying it. The suckers are everywhere.
I tip my hat back, “Well, m’am upon CLOSER inspection it seems this tree is half dead.”

I feed it water anyway and pray. Still undecided between putting a bed sheet over its head and giving it a GI party here on the premises or hoping it pulls through. I was tired of this damn tree.

The next day while the wife is at work, I plot. I scheme. I seethe. I start by using a little canister vacuum which quickly fills up. I then use a big ass wet dry vac to try to vacuum up all of the dead needles, but it does no good. Every time I nudge the tree a metric fuck ton more needles come tumbling down. I am also spending more time prying the vac hose off the plastic tarp than actually cleaning anything up.

I cave in and call her. “We need to take this thing back, give it away or something. This ain’t going to work. It’s like pushing on a string, it’s no good.”
“Okay,” she says.

My little lady gets home from work. We hoist the tree up on the roof of the Jeep and she takes off. I stay back as I have to get Junior from his bus stop after school.

My bride calls. “I hope you don’t hate it. I think it’s like 6 feet tall…”
“WHAT? We paid $80 for a 6 foot Pee Wee are you kidding me?”

As she pulls up in the driveway, I rush to the car, tape measure in hand. “Wait a minute, this is closer to 9 feet. It’s tall enough” I exclaim, relieved.

“We should take it back” she states.
“What? How can we take a tree back if we haven’t even looked at it for Pete’s sake?!” I responded, already back pedaling and just wanting the damn tree saga to be over.

We take it home and unfurl it. As it is a more demure size, it is able to fit into our old tree stand. I hose it down and take a look. It is a) not half dead b) does not weigh a metric fuck ton and c) is pretty nice.

Rejoice! I bring it inside the next morning and put it in the place of honor. I feed it water and pet it on the head. Good tree. Nice tree.

The following day I dip my hand in the base. Hmm. It hadn’t taken a single ounce of liquid.

“You do realize that it is a pre-cut tree which means you had to cut off a little bit of the base so it could drink up right?”

My face crashes hard and lands on the floor. My eyeballs went east while my mouth, nose, and ears, all split up like pirates trying to find the treasure. I recompose myself.

Hmmmm. I take the tree off of the stand and take the base ass hanging just outside my back deck and I go to town SANS lube. I take my JET GRIP shark tooth saw and hack hack hack hack hack cut the base so that it can drink up.

“You killed the tree” my woman wails. “You’re only supposed to take off an inch if that. How much did you remove?”

I show her the back end (smaller side) of what I cut off. “Tiny, you see!”
“Show me the other side!”
I do. It’s more like 4 inches.
“This tree is going to be runt” she laments.
“Nah. Trust me or my name isn’t Stone Jackson!”
“It’s N…”
“Shush, Woman! Don’t you believe in the Power of Christmas?”

I put the tree on the base, feed it more water, and take a step back.
She cocks her head to the side. “Now THAT is a tree. Tall, slender, green. Yes!”
Relieved, I go and get blind ass drunk. AFTER I make delicious chocolate covered pretzels to atone for my sins.

True Story.