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2002-12-02 - 11:36 a.m.

The year diva and I buried the truck in the mud carting Christmas trees was the same year I clogged up and ruined the Hoover vacuuming up pounds of dried and fallen pine needles. It was also the last year I had a live pine for Christmas.

Now I have one of those tall, slender alpine trees. A long, lanky impostor. Acquiring the tree, however, was almost as catastrophic as the prior year's outing. diva and I had been to Ottumwa (an Iowa burg 65 miles north of here offering the closest major mall) in mid October on Christmas reconnaissance. A holiday specialty shop had opened in the mall, and the bay window display featured the novel trees, casually elegant wearing their rustic, mountain ornaments.

diva prowled and snooped around inside the shop in search of snowmen to add to her flourishing collection. I spent my time inspecting the trees. This was a new fad--at least in the Midwest it was new--and I was mesmerized by the simple backwoods look. Until I inspected the price tag. Whoa! My tree the previous year was a walloping dollar donation, somewhat higher when the cost of cleaning and repairing the borrowed truck was added on, but nothing even remotely close to the cost of this make believe tree.

During the rest of our shopping trip I would periodically comment on the tree. Finally, diva asked why the hell I didn't go buy the damn thing. I wasn't paying that kind of money for a gawdam Christmas tree, that's why!

For the next few weeks, as each day passed and Christmas rushed headlong at me, I became grumpier, until I was finally transformed into my December Scrooge self. And I was still thinking about the lean lines of the alpine tree. It would be a nice fit by the atrium doors in the dining room, and its woodland appearance was a natural for my home in the timber. By the second week of December I'd talked myself into shelling out the cash and getting the tree.

We left for Ottumwa on a Friday afternoon after work. A cold, dreary, cloudy afternoon. Thirty miles into our journey some intermittent snow was dusting the windshield, when we hit the 45-mile mark snow was blowing and blustering around us. Typical northern Missouri, southern Iowa weather. diva and I were accustomed to it; we hardly noticed the fluffy white powder piling up in the fields. When we reached Quincy Mall in Ottumwa, we skidded and skimmed through the parking lot. Indifferent to the storm brewing around us, we meandered through the mall until we came to the holiday store. I loitered by the tree, inspecting it from all sides, in no hurry to part with my money.

"You dumbass, you gonna buy that damn thing or not?" diva was itching to shop.

After buying the tree, I went for the car and drove to the store's back loading dock to load it. The car was under a thick blanket of snow, although it had stopped snowing. Now sleet was beating a steady, stinging rhythm against my face. I fought with the cumbersome tree and finally laid it--all seven feet of it--the length of my Jeep, resting its top on the dashboard, then returned to the front lot, retrieved diva and offhandedly mentioned the rapidly changing weather. We agreed it was nothing to get our panties in a twist about and toddled off to Diamond Dave's for a quick beer and chips, then continued to wander aimlessly around the mall.

Eventually we wore out the mall, but we weren't done in Ottumwa. Our plans for the evening included dinner at Fisherman's Bay, a locally owned Red Lobster copycat with great food and wonderfully chilled beer mugs. And, by gawd, a little snowstorm wasn't going to ruin our dinner. Despite the change from ice back to gusts of snow, several inches of ice-crusted snow on my car and a tedious wait in the mall parking lot while the car's defroster blew high and I scrapped a thick layer of ice from the windshield, we were undaunted: we were going to enjoy a leisurely surf and turf meal.

Maneuvering the car from the lot to the roadway was challenging; we fishtailed up a slight incline, slid through a red light--ours was one of very few cars on the roads--and slipped across town for dinner. Any time I braked, changed lanes or turned right, the tree shifted and slapped diva in the face.

"You're never gonna get to decorate and enjoy this thing," she wrestled the tree back into position. "Cause I'm gonna shove it up your ass!"

The hilly driveway at Fisherman's Bay was a sheet of ice, so I parked in a lower lot belonging to a neighborhood fire department and we crawled up the bank, skated across the lot and traipsed into the restaurant.

We ate. It snowed.

Included in our idle dinner conversation were occasional weather updates. Looks bad, doesn't it? Um, yeah, looks even worse than before. Wonder what it'll be like on the way home? Hm, probably not fer shit, should we have another beer? Restaurant’s empty except for us, isn’t it. Yep, nobody on the road, either. Insignificant chatter. When we exited the restaurant a solid wall of snow slammed in our faces. Both the fire station and my car had disappeared in the swirling milky clouds, and the highway was lost in a blizzard.

"NOW what the hell we gonna do, you dumbass?" diva, arms flailing, went sliding past me down the incline. "You and you're GAWDAM Christmas tree!"

"Ah, shuddup, we'll be fine!" Brave words as I sailed across the slick ice and landed on my ass in the middle of the diner's empty parking lot.

The drive home was treacherous and as surreal as 2001: A Space Oddessy. We traveled slowly along--mile after mile--in a swirling, nebulous white squall. The snow was heavy and blinding and showing no signs of letting up. Once in a while I'd ask diva if she could see the road.

"Oh, fer crissake, you’re asking me? You're driving." Then she'd swat my wonderful, new Christmas tree out of her face, glare at me over the top, and mumble about where I was eventually going to find the tree if I survived the night.

A typical hour drive home ended up a four-hour trip through a snowy hell. When I finally arrived home and unloaded my new alpine tree I realized I'd set myself up for the horrors of hauling it from the basement and decorating it every year. I was right; if my alpine isn't standing majestically in the dining room by the first of December, diva starts squawking.

"Where's that gawdam tree you bout got us killed for, cause you just had to have it? Next time I'm here it'd better be up and ready for Christmas or I'm gonna shove the damned ugly thing up your ass where it belongs!"

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