Caffeinated Politics

Though our home on the Madison isthmus was built in 1892 with one large white pine from the northern reaches of Wisconsin, we have never had a white pine Christmas tree. But when I was a young man, that variety was the only one ever to be decorated for Christmas in the apartments where I lived in the city. That was because much of the wooded portions on the 100 acres on the Humphrey family land back home consisted of white pine. It is then easy to understand why no one ever saw me buying a tree when a homegrown one was precisely what I wanted.

Over the decades, the memories of those Christmas trees remain priceless to me. To underscore that sentiment, the axe that I used to cut those trees hangs at our home on a wall.

The story of how the axe landed in our Madison isthmus home involves it traveling through the absurdly toxic family probate process following the death of my dad. I envy those who never had the burdens of siblings. The items I wanted, as my attorney noted at the time (who was gracious and never charged me for the months of work), would not have collectively sold for $25.00 at a garage sale in Hancock. Simply put, I wanted memories.

So, let me explain what that axe means to me.

Before purchasing a VW Beetle, with a minuscule trunk, I used to drive home to Hancock in my Dodge Duster to cut a Christmas tree for my apartment in Madison. It was an annual ritual made special because my dad assisted in making the simple wooden stand that allowed the tree to stand upright. My trees at that time were always smaller than what was required for the store-bought stands. There was a very good reason for that.

As a boy, I loved to walk in the woods populated with white pines and oaks. After I got to a certain age, I would take the axe along and chop on this dead branch or even take down small spindly trees here and there. When I became a teenager, there was one tall white pine that I would unleash all my angst and frustrated hormones upon. All the tensions of youth were unleashed on that tree. At the end of my teen years, I discovered there was far more tree than angst. When I left home, it was still standing, but with a very haggard look. Somewhere in my 20s, that tree came down, and others took its place.

I had narrowed my stress-releasing axing to a single tree thanks to some thoughtful words from my dad. I was just a young boy when he told me that one just never knows when a tree would be needed to hide under in the rain. He looked as though he were sheltering his face from raindrops as he spoke. One can never foresee, he added, the need to climb up one to get away from a wild animal. That is when dad would imitate the noise of a bear and its growl. The moral of the story was, of course, that trees were our friends and should be respected.

All trees have value, according to dad. At the holiday season, I noticed that many of the smaller trees lacked a postcard quality of rounded beauty that our culture values as Christmas approaches. One side of so many little trees on our property seemed to be deformed. They did not get enough light or were too close to other trees in the woods. Dad would comment about the misshapen trees, telling me, “They all want to be a Christmas tree!” As I grew older, that message became ever more important to me. When it came time to chop down my own trees for Christmas as a young man, I always sought out a nice tree, but one that was not perfect. My friends would smile and gently chide me about the ‘Charlie Brown’ tree. Yet, decorated in all the lights and glass ornaments, the tree was always perfect, just as it was for Charles Schulz’s Charlie Brown and his friends.

Each season for years and years, I took my dad’s axe to the woods and dragged my tree through the snow to our ‘barn’ where Dad would eye it up and then reach for some wood pieces in the pile near the back of the building. He would measure a bit, then take the wood, and place it over the side of a wooden potato crate and cut it to perfect dimensions. He would hammer and fashion the pieces together so the small trunk of the tree would fit without slipping out. As he worked, I would look out the door of the barn and see mom at the kitchen window. She carefully watched our progress, ensuring that we didn’t do anything foolish or hurt ourselves. Steam collected on the windowpanes from something wonderful cooking on the stove for dinner.

Days after I had the tree back in Madison, dad would phone to inquire as to how it was standing. I always answered that it was up and decorated without a single problem. Vendors do not put less-than-perfect Christmas trees on the lots in the city, but I can say honestly that my little trees could stand in competition with any of them, if the competition were about conveying life’s lessons on love.

I never asked Dad about how or why he came up with his philosophy about Christmas trees. It just fit him and never seemed to need an explanation. It means we are needed in life, and all fit in somewhere. And with a little help from someone, we can be what we dream of.

Merry Christmas!