The Second Hand Christmas Tree and Other Coniferous Musings

We have a second hand Christmas tree this year.

It’s a little smaller than the ones we usually get, but is very nicely shaped. We purchased it from the Boro of Califon. It had been used at the Nellie Hoffman House, the restoration project with which we are involved, for a Christmas reception two weeks ago.

Kathie and I thought it was a shame for it to sit there and go to waste, so we bought it back from the town. However, since it has some miles on it, we fear that it might not make it to Christmas. I have this vision of waking Christmas morn to a brown stick and a pile of needles in the living room.

This was not the official town tree, however, which is a scrawny little thing next to the funeral parlor parking lot. This has only served for the past two years. Before that the tree was a rather splendid, large pine in front of the Historic Society Headquarters at the old train station. Unfortunately, it was planted on the right-of-way for a long distance gas transmission line.

The gas company said that the tree had to go because its roots were threatening to compromise the pipeline. This is a lot of hooey because the line, after it leaves Califon, runs through miles of heavy forest where enormous oaks and maples grow right up to the edge of the right-of-way and whose roots must surely “compromise” it.

But what town father wants to see a headline that reads: “Town Citizens Die in Fire Ball Caused by Village Christmas Tree”? So they caved-in and the funeral parlor tree became the official conifer. To me, the proximity of the parlor casts a pall over the tree lighting festivities and caroling that takes place in its very shadow. Lord only knows what mourners think when they see Santa has shown up on a fire truck at their loved one’s wake.

Many years ago, when our kids were young, I was Chairman of the Town Recreation Committee and in charge of the Christmas tree lighting. Unfortunately, I created a controversy with my music selections. At the time we were struggling financially and only owned one Christmas album. It was Walt Disney characters singing carols.

Well, there was outrage and I was forced to appoint a music director who had a more extensive and traditional collection.

I don’t know what the fuss was about. I liked the Disney album and my kids loved it. How could you not admire Goofy’s “five onion ring” riff on the “Twelve Days of Christmas,” or the way he artistically adlibbed a series of “dootey, dootey, doo, doos” through various other standards? And it’s all low brow, secular stuff like “Frosty”, “Here Comes Santa,” etc.

It’s not as if Donald Duck had a go at the “Ave Maria.”

And frankly, I’d rather listen to a duck with a speech impediment do “It’s a Marshmallow World in the Winter” than Johnny Mathis. If I hear him simper “it’s a yum,yummy world made for sweethearts,” one more time, I’ll toss my Christmas cookies.

Kathie and I are down-sizing. Several weeks ago, our son, Kris, and grandson, Owen, came down to go through his childhood possessions and to bring back home those he wanted to keep.

One of the things that went back was the Disney album. And so, another generation of kids will chime in and bellow “FIVE ONION RINGS” whenever they hear the “Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Hark! Do you hear what I hear? Pine needles falling everywhere….

Merry Christmas.

A Bad Idea

I fell off the ladder today.

I fell off the ladder because I don’t have a car.

I don’t have a car today because it is in the shop.

Since I don’t have a car today and the wind chill outside is in the single digits, I am house-bound.

When I am house-bound bad ideas come hatching out of me like the aliens in the movies of the same name.

Of course, I was only house-bound for an hour or so. This morning I took a four mile walk in the frigid wind. It was lovely. My new down coat was up to the task and I saw a flock of bluebirds.

As soon as I got back and finished my lunch, the bored, guilty feeling came over me. I had to find something to do.

Of course, it’s all my mother’s fault. When we were kids we could not be in the house during the daytime reading or watching TV. She insisted we be out in the fresh air, despite the fact that we lived in Jersey City in the 1950’s, a time when chemical production was in full swing and the air actually tasted worse than it smelled.

This rule even applied when she took us for afternoon visits to our grandmother’s house which was up the block from a gentian violet factory and where the fresh air literally turned our clothing blue. My mother said this was okay because gentian violet was a “medicine.”

As I sat in the empty, quiet kitchen trying to think of something to do that would take me out of the house, I thought first of raking the leaves. Since I had raked most of them and the survivors were being whipped about in a 20 mile per hour wind, this was a weak option. I briefly considered chasing them down with the pool skimmer, but decided this was desperate even by my standards.

I recalled an observation Kathie had made a week or so ago about our outside Christmas decorations. We have a pine tree at the corner of our house that our son planted as sprig when he was a sprig some thirty years ago. Each year I would string it with lights and, along with a wreath here and there, that was our Christmas display.

I gave that up when the tree developed Rockefeller Center Syndrome, perhaps picturing itself being aahed at by Al Roker and sung to by Josh Grobin, and suddenly shot up at an alarming rate. Or maybe, I just got older.

Kathie said that she thought that, since the tree was located facing our driveway and our lane, it was a shame that people approaching the house would not see any festive seasonal décor. This was not presented as a criticism or a challenge, and I did not take it as such at the time. It was just an observation.

Still, as I sat at the kitchen table, it formed the seed of the evil alien that would soon burst out of me as a fully developed bad idea.

“Yes,” I thought, “It is a shame that people approaching our house will think that the Andersens don’t know how to keep Christmas.” The fact that this sounded like something Clark Griswold would say, did not deter me.

By Jove, I would string lights on that tree! Since the tree had grown, I thought surely it would hold my 20 foot ladder extended to its limit. This still would not enable me to get lights to the top of the tree. However, by duck taping two brooms together and balancing the lights on the end, I would create a device that would enable me to place them at the top of the tree from the top of the 20 foot ladder. This was the bad idea.

I extended the ladder and leaned it against the tree. Carrying my placement device with the end of the light string cleverly gripped by the bristles of the broom, I ascended the ladder. When I got to the top and full extended myself to place the beginning of the string, I felt the ladder slowly sliding to my left.

I knew something bad was about to happen. The soft pine branches were gradually sagging away from the ladder carrying it away and downward in the direction of the living room window.

On the other side of that window is my comfy chair where I have spent many pleasant evenings reading in front of the fire. I wondered if my glass-shredded corpse carrying the ducked taped brooms landed in the chair, whether anyone would solve the mystery of how I perished.

Just then, the ladder snagged long enough for me to leap off with just a sore knee to show for my misadventure.

From where I am sitting in my comfy chair I can see the cursed evergreen. If I can cut it with my chain saw, I just might to able to drop it between the two power lines that come into the house on either side of the tree.

The Interview

The moths ate my crotch.

Kathie says its my own damn fault because I hung the suit up without sending it to the cleaners first.

I put it in the closet two years ago at the end of my last day of work, and apparently the moths fell upon it like the Greeks and Trojans struggling over the armor of Achilles at the death of Patroklos.

(I am sure you “regular” readers of this blog are stunned to see a classical reference. Rest assured, I don’t plan to make a habit of it. It’s just that I recently finished a book titled “The War That Killed Achilles.” No, I haven’t read everything else.)

The reason I am down to one moth eaten suit is that I tossed all the others when I stopped working, but kept one all-season and one summer model in case I needed a suit for a wedding or a funeral.

Now I have a dilemma because I have an honest-to-God job interview tomorrow and can either wear Mothra or my Big Daddy seersucker model.

I am leaning toward the pre-chewed version, since nothing says clueless and out of work like some schmuck wearing a seersucker suit in December.

I will just keep my legs crossed. On second thought, this might send the wrong message body language-wise. It might indicate I am uptight and not open to new ideas and directions. And besides, since real men spread their legs and sprawl, it might be a sign of passiveness or submissiveness on my part to be sitting there like one of the stenos in Mad Men waiting to take dictation.

Maybe I will just face it out and dare the interviewer to gape at my tattered nether region. If he is worth his Blackberry, he will realize that doing so would create a hostile work environment for me and subject him to onerous penalties. Neither can he ask what’s up with my crotch without breaking many State and Federal codes.

Still, I wonder why the moths went for my crotch? If it was salty sweat they were after they might have struck the armpits as well, but they did not. I suppose I will never know what was oozing from down there that was like a dinner bell for moths. Here’s an even creepier thought: I wonder if the larva was already down there squirming and oozing while my family jewels were in residence.

I won’t go there. I have an interview to prepare for. It’s a shame this thing took the direction that it did because I intended to write a blog about how morale building it is to have a real interview and how great it feels to be in the hunt for something…..anything! Instead, I wrote about bugs in my britches.

Maybe my pants weren’t the only thing that got moth eaten.

The Jurist

On December 6, I report to the County Court to serve my jury duty.

I am looking forward to it. This wasn’t always so. Back in my working days, I would moan and groan and wiggle liked a hooked fish to get out of it. I never did.

However, though I have been called four or five times in the last twenty years, I have never actually been on a jury and have only been empanelled once, which shows the system is fairly efficient at keeping crack pots off of juries.

The one time I got empanelled I was frantic to avoid getting picked. Someone told me that if you told the judge and lawyers that you believed in the death penalty, you wouldn’t get selected. From what I was hearing from the interviews with the other panelists, it seemed like the case involved the theft of car radios. My mind was racing to find a way to work my views on the death penalty into a radio pilfering case. Even for a hardliner, it seemed a touch severe to execute someone for depriving a motorist of Howard Stern.

Neither did I want to waste two weeks of my life pondering the fate of a radio thief.

With a heavy heart I took the chair to be interviewed by the lawyers and judge. After several preliminary questions, however, one of them asked if I had cause to be incredulous of police testimony.

Suddenly, I saw a shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds. As someone who grew up in the city, I firmly believe no one in his right mind would ever believe a thing a cop said. I also feel the same about lawyers, but if everyone who thought cops and lawyers were liars was disqualified from jury duty, our criminal justice system would grind to a halt.

However, I pointed out that, as a member of the borough council in my town, I was involved in a law suit with our police chief whom we were trying to discharge for sexual harassment of a crossing guard

This was the infamous case of the Pissing Police Chief.

Before I even got to the pissing part, the judge dismissed me.

Now that I am retired, however, I hope I get a case and it is a juicy one. Nothing violent with gory crime scene photos and splatter analysis though; and definitely not anything where retaliation against the jury is even a remote possibility. Something involving a high class escort service with lots of yummy young ladies vamping to the jury would be ideal.

Or something involving malfeasance in the county Republican Party. I’d love to send those guys to the chair.

I don’t think I’d want me on my jury though. Kathie says I never listen and form my opinions before any of the facts are in. Guilty. If some goon shows up without a necktie, I’ll send him up the river before he can open his mouth.

I also can’t remember anything I have heard or read for more than fifteen minutes, so it is totally possible that I could completely forget someone’s alibi: “Oh, he was out of town? Oops, I forgot. We can straighten it out on appeal.”

That brave juror in “Twelve Angry Men” who steadfastly holds on to his belief in the defendant’s innocence against the 11 others is not me. I am more the if-you-want-to-fry-this-guy’s-ass-that’s-fine-with-me-where-are-we-going-to-lunch sort.

Also, I don’t see well or hear well, have to go to the bathroom every half hour, get antsy if I have to sit in one place for too long, and always doze off after lunch. Sounds like it might not go well. I’ll keep you posted.

99%

You must be worried about me.

I know what you are thinking: “If they rescind the tax breaks for the top one per cent of earners, will this hurt Jerry?”

Well, put your minds at rest, I am firmly ensconced in the lower 99%. In fact, as a struggling writer (lower 5 %) and artist (lower 2.5 %) who is also unemployed, I am dropping in the rankings faster than the N.Y. Mets in September. I have a very comfortable cushion between me and tax cut rescindination, thank you very much.

I don’t feel too sorry for those one-per-centers, either. I had to cough up my unemployment, so let them kick in a few zillion to keep the Polarized Express rolling on the tracks.

I am not a mathematician (upper 20 %), but it strikes me that 99 per cent is clearly a majority. Why do we keep electing people who just want to help the top tier?

Supposedly, because it helps us. I am not an economist (top 10 %), but theoretically, some of the money they save is supposed to trickle down to the masses. Let me tell you, I am an old guy and have been waiting since the Reagan administration for some of that gravy to reach me, but my drip-pan is still dry.

There are other reasons that many of us think that it helps us to help rich people: a.) we are not smart; in fact, many of us watch Fox News; b) we really don’t want to see Oprah get screwed; c) we don’t want to screw ourselves, since it would be just our luck to hit the lottery AFTER the tax breaks have been rescinded.

This exposes an inherent flaw in the Trickle Down Theory: rich people ARE smart. Unlike us, they don’t run off to Wal-Mart to buy a hot tub and a new shotgun as soon as they get a few extra bucks. No, they invest. And what do they invest in? Hedge funds. And who runs hedge funds? The top one per cent of wage earners. I rest my case (lawyers: top 5%)

Also, the rich can afford the best. Who produces the best? You guessed it, the top one per cent of earners. Let’s personalize this by focusing on writing. A rich person couldn’t buy this crap if he wanted to because I can’t sell it to anybody who would sell it to him. So if he wants something to read, he has to buy a book by James Patterson.

According to the N.Y. Times Magazine, this guy is like a digitized Dickens who works on 12 novels at once, all sure-fire best sellers. While texting one with his toes, he tweets another on his iphone, dictates a third and has a legion of minions working on the others. In other words, he is in the top one per cent of earners. No gravy for moi.

So as you tuck yourself in tonight, say a prayer for Rush, shed a tear for Cheney, but don’t worry about me: I’m good. Oh, and a goodnight thought for my children: don’t lose any sleep about that whole estate tax thing. You don’t have a dog in that fight.

Sneaking Up

I just got an email asking me to rate and review my new sneakers.

The vendor said that, if I did this, I could not only then Twitter and Facebook my review to my legion of friends, but would also be automatically entered in a drawing with a cash prize of $1,000.

In the first place, I am an Old Writer and actually remember the days when writers and reviewers, rather than being “eligible” for a cash prize,actually got paid for their services. In the second place, it takes more than a long shot at a thousand bucks to get me off the couch.

That’s pretty chintzy, I must say, in a day when a grand won’t even buy a pair of sunglasses or a half hour with one of Elliott Spitzer’s companions.

In fact, every time I purchase Aleve at the pharmacy the clerk tells me that, as the 3,632nd customer of the day, I have just been entered in drawing with a cash prize of $10,000. Let me tell you, it is a lot easier to pop pain killers than it is to write reviews.

Raise the stakes to twenty Gs, however, and I am ready to support the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

In the third place, most of my friends and acquaintances don’t give a rat’s ass if I live or die, never mind concerning themselves with my state of well-being footwear-wise.

All of that being said, however, I like my new puppy palaces. They are still new with that wonderful new sneaker smell, and not the rancid odor of a decomposing swamp creature they take on later.

I don’t buy new sneaks often, but one sign that the time has come is when I have to look for them on the front porch rather than their usual parking place in the middle of the living room floor. Another is when, as we are leaving on an auto trip, my wife suggests that, rather than packing or wearing my sneakers, I might want to bungee them to the roof of the car.

It is also time to re-shoe when walking in them feels like riding in a car with four flat tires. These new guys have so much bounce that I can’t resist breaking out in a few choruses of “The Happy Wanderer” as I schlep to the post office.

I usually only buy new sneakers in the fall or winter because in the spring or summer I quickly forget I have on the new ones and mow the grass in them. Grass stains are a sure fire sneaker killer for me and once they are thus sullied they are never allowed out in public again. A man wearing grass stained sneakers is saying three things: a.) I am too poor to own more than one pair; b.) I mow my own grass because I can’t afford to hire illegal aliens to do it for me; c.) I use a walk behind mower because my yard isn’t big enough to use a tractor. All of these things, if nothing else, brand you as a Democrat at a time when it probably isn’t safe to be one.

So, I am not going to take the vendor up on his offer to review my shoes. I have better things to do than write about sneakers.

Autumn Song, Redux

As you sit at your desks and do what you do,
I am raking leaves and stepping in pooh.
As through the leaves I gamely do slog,
No time for Facebook, Twitter or blog.
If bad poesy’s your bag, here’s an oldie for you.
If it offends, just scrape from your shoe.



The last leaves have fallen from their perches on high,
And litter the ground right up to his thigh.
In their legions and armies they boldly stack.
Small children and dogs have to turn back.
As he thinks of his wife it gives him the lumps
She can't go to work with leaves on her pumps!

He rattles the heavens with a mighty cry.
“If you weren’t already dead, now you would die!”
He straps on his vacuum, the dreaded El Toro.
(Which he had to buy since he couldn’t borrow.)
He falls upon them from hillock to gulch
And grinds the quivering foe to a powdery mulch.


Like the heroes of old he absorbs all his licks,
Leaf dust up the nose and bites from the ticks.
As he lays about him, he considers his shoe.
Oh, no! He’s stepped in the neighbor’s dog’s pooh.
He stops for a sec to consider this scandal.
He wonders if noble Caesar,as he slaughtered the Vandal,
Had to stop to clean dog shit off of his sandal.


For weeks and weeks the grim battle roils
On and on the suburban Hercules toils.
At missing his football and baseball, he curses.
He is caught in an epic with too many verses.
As the Aeolian blast delivers the neighbors' pile,
“I’ll bet they’ll miss their cat,” he says with a smile.

The bags of the fallen line the drive.
Oak, maple, cherry, none made it alive.
He shoulders El Toro and surveys the field.
He is glad he fought on and never did yield.
His chest swells with pride like mighty El Cid
Then his wife whispers: “Next year, hire a kid.”