Seventy-some years ago I thought I was sort of an authority on the perfect Christmas tree. It was 3 to 4 feet tall, was cut off Boone County’s rocky hillsides -- which were not much good for anything else -- and it was cedar, of course. Its branches were trimmed up at the bottom so the buyer could stand it in a bucket of sand or gravel and keep water on it to keep it fresh and fragrant. It was delivered to the customer as soon as possible after it was cut. And it cost 25 cents.

There were two kinds of cedars in our woods: fat ones with soft greenery, and slender, thicker ones with sharper needles that had quite a bit more bite. I cut and sold both kinds after one of Dad’s milk customers told him she’d pay me “the same as at the store” for a fresh cedar from our woods. Dad loaded my trees on the truck and left them on front porches when he set out the glass bottles of milk before breakfast each morning.

Sometimes I went to the woods right after school and carried a couple of trees over my shoulders, arriving home after dark. Prickly cedar needles were on my clothes, in my gloves, up my coat sleeves and down my neck. I was happy when it snowed because I could tie several trees on my sled and pull them along. I still was covered with stickers because I got flat down so I could cut straight across the stem and as near the ground as possible.

Always my trees were taller than I expected; trees seem to grow after they’re cut and again when they’re set up indoors. The larger the tree, the more ornaments are required, and fragile glass balls were expensive. Children saw only the decorations that were at their eye level -- and the angel at the top. Almost no one ordered a tree more than 4 feet tall.

Dad was of German stock, a stickler for the work ethic. Only once in my tree-cutting career did he have to come to my rescue. Someone called and ordered a tree 6 feet tall and I cut one and started dragging that monster home. The farther I dragged it, the bigger that tree became. I finally gave up and left it on the ground on a creek bank. Sleet and freezing rain came in the night and coated that tree with ice. Having keen insight, Dad took his best saw along, and we headed for the woods by team and wagon to haul the big tree home. He knocked off some of the ice and then sawed off almost half of it before he loaded the beautiful 6 foot top on the wagon. We stood it in the corner of the steamy milk house until the ice melted. I got $1.25 ~it.

Few people asked for the perfectly shaped tree. Some said, “Ours will stand in the corner, so it doesn’t need to be fully round.” Customers were delighted if they found an abandoned bird’s nest deep inside the needles. Cedars gave a bird family food and protection from wind and rain. The birds, of course, raised their chicks, and they all went elsewhere for the winter and built new nests each year.

While I was still in grade school, I amassed a small fortune of $30 and opened an account at the Columbia Savings Bank but I seldom wrote a check because my money was hard to come by. Dad’s hillsides, and ours now, are covered with two kinds of cedars. Wild turkeys find good cover there and white tail deer scratch fuzzy young antlers on those cedar trunks. Even now sometimes I take a saw to our woods, cut a fragrant cedar and carry it home over my shoulder, remembering.