Yes Ma'am I Did Steal that Christmas Tree

Back in the 60's I got called poor a lot but in spite of that Christmases were good, I guess. When I was little others felt sorry for me and gave me stuff, but by the time I was in high school that was over and I might gets socks, which I needed, but it was not as much fun as a toy which I was probably too old for. I liked music and thought I might like to play guitar in a band and get rich but that didn't happen. All that happened is that somebody gave us a silver Christmas tree with a sparkle light shining up at it which made it look fancy but not real like it did before Papaw died, and since he died the day after Christmas of '62 maybe that's why we didn't have a tree after that.

Getting older made me think that a real tree was important and that I was old enough to solve a simple problem like that. I already knew we couldn't even buy presents so I knew we couldn't buy a tree so I and a friend walked down the railroad track, starting at the crossing where the old crossing guard died when his pickup truck was hit by a train and I thought that was ironic even before I understood irony. We walked 'till we reached a pasture field with some cows a good distance away and slid down the bank from the track to the ditch and over a barbwire fence into the field praying to God that there were no snakes to bite us, but knowing that if there was we deserved it for sneaking onto someone else's property to steal a Christmas tree and I'd always heard God's judgments were just even if inconvenient.

We found a little pitiful fuzzy cedar tree and thought that it would look good in my small living room even though it would be so cold in that part of the house no one would go and look at it but me. I lay down in the weeds under the tree with the saw and started cutting. It was slow going. But then the cows heard us and started to come to us like it was feeding time or something, but we thought they were coming to trample us so we got scared and forgot all about God and his judgment snakes and started to saw faster and laugh nervously, which made the sawing even harder. Tommy started to yell "O my God they're coming! They're coming!" That made me laugh even harder and get so weak I couldn't hold the saw so he cursed and grabbed the saw from me and finished cutting down the tree but not before holding the saw up and yelling "What the hell is this?" And I laughed and said "It's a pipe saw-it's all we got!" which made me laugh even harder while he got madder. He finally got the tree cut down, which we lugged over the fence and up the bank back to the train track stumbling and laughing like a couple of drunken sailors.

We took the little tree to my house and decorated it with some paper ornaments I cut out of an old Family Circle magazine and when my friend left I sat in the cold room by myself and looked at it and felt happy. There were no lights on it but I didn't care because I cut this tree myself and I was the provider of this fuzzy green joyous thing with its paper decorations.

That night I watched Carol Burnette, dressed up like a cleaning lady, take scraps and build a little tree out of garbage and sit on her bucket and sing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and I knew how she felt. I don't even remember what I got that year or even if I got anything but socks but I remember the tree and how happy I was being simple.

No one ever asked me where the tree came from. But I was prepared to be an honest thief, if necessary. I sat there every night, looking up at that tree and practiced saying "Yes ma'am, I did steal that Christmas tree." The subject never came up.