Published in The Chronicle Feb. 4, 2008
Some people have stories about their ancestors picking up muskets and going out into the wilderness to hunt for food.
Me? I have stories about my ancestors picking up a meat-grinder and going into the basement to make sausage.
My grandparents had a very limited list of things they would eat, mostly things familiar to Eastern Europeans that you couldn’t find in an A&P, a Stop&Shop or a Pick ’n’ Pay.
Things such as a Hungarian rice sausage called hurka (pronounced who’d-kuh), which was made with pork shoulder, onions and rice -- and other things you probably don’t want to know about.
My grandparents made their own hurka because shadier sausage-makers used ingredients not to their liking – things such as pig snouts and ears.
None of that for my grandparents. They only wanted the “good” stuff – things such as pig livers and lungs.
Scary as that sounds, it was good stuff.
And unfortunately, when my grandparents died, so did the hurka making. It is just too much trouble.
These days, the only time we get hurka is when my parents order some from a local Hungarian church and share it with us. My dad brought some over last week.
When my grandparents made hurka, it was quite an operation -- an operation that would never be done in a kitchen. The grease and the mess made it no job for a spotless Hungarian kitchen.
That’s why my grandparents had a second stove in the basement where grease and mess belong. It was in a small room off the basement TV room.
If you are old enough, you probably remember those basement TV rooms people had before there were family rooms. They contained furniture and TVs deemed no longer good enough for the living room.
It was in this big TV room that the actual sausage-making took place.
Along one wall was a long table that my grandfather had fashioned out of plywood and scrap lumber. It was covered with a vinyl tablecloth that was thumb-tacked under the edge.
On that table was the sausage-maker, a heavy metal appliance that looked something like a meat-grinder only bigger. Next to the sausage-maker was a pan filled with water in which sausage casings – another thing you don’ really want to know about -- were soaking.
The cooked rice and meat products were brought from the stove to this table where the meat was ground, mixed with the rice, seasoned and loaded into the sausage casings.
My grandfather would take a sausage casing out of the water and push it onto the sausage maker spigot the same way pantyhose are gathered on your foot before you pull them up your leg.
Then he would crank the machine and the sausage mixture would slowly fill the casing. My grandmother would guide the plump link, pull it off and curl it into a ring. She’d place the ring on a tray to await packaging in white butcher paper. They would repeat the process until they ran out of mixture or ran out of casings, whichever came first.
And then my grandmother would bake some of the hurka in a cast iron skillet in the oven for any helpers -- or kids who were hanging around.
Mmm, I can almost smell it cooking.
Wait, I can smell it cooking.
I put some in the oven – and I think it’s just about done.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
It's what's in the cupboard, not in the bank
Published Jan. 14, 2008
Know how to tell if someone is really well off?
You can’t tell by the house she lives in or the car she drives. There is a good chance the bank owns both of those things, and she can just barely make the monthly payments.
You can’t tell by the clothes she wears or the vacations she takes. Those expenses could be piled up on a Visa card or two or three.
No, the only way to truly gauge the wealth of a person is by snooping in her cupboards.
For financial well-being is measured in rolls of toilet paper and paper towels and Scotch tape.
Or cans of chicken stock and tomato sauce.
Or jars of peanut butter and mayonnaise, bottles of ketchup and vegetable oil.
Yes, wealthy people have healthy cupboards.
It’s true.
One time a lot of years ago, we were overnight guests of one of my college friends.
She and I both got journalism degrees from Ohio State, but I used mine to get into newspapers and she used hers to get into corporate America.
While my career path may have been nobler, it certainly appeared hers was more lucrative.
And I figured that out by what I found under her bathroom sink. There was not one extra roll of toilet paper — like the cupboard in my bathroom — there were several packages of toilet tissue.
There was not one extra bar of soap, there were a dozen.
And there were extra tubes of toothpaste and shampoo and even toothbrushes.
Wow. I felt as if I was in a store.
How luxurious it was, I thought, to run out of something and find more in the cupboard.
I’m going to be like that someday, I thought.
Someday, I’m not going to have to run to the store every time I’m out of tissue or peanut butter or ketchup. Someday, I’m going to have extra.
And, for the most part, I have achieved that goal.
Now, if I run out of pancake syrup, I can go to the pantry and find a full bottle.
Or when my son dumps the last of the A1 sauce on his steak, there is often another bottle up in the cupboard.
Ahh, it’s great to find things in the cupboard.
I’ve been on a hunt for matzo meal for a couple of weeks. Matzo meal is that stuff that you use to make matzo balls to put in chicken soup.
I looked for it at the local grocery stores. I looked for it at the West Side Market. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I stopped over at my parents’ house the other day. My mom’s got a larder that could feed the town of Amherst in a natural disaster.
But it wasn’t always like that. There were five kids in the family. We were almost always out of one thing or another.
I told her about my futile search for matzo meal.
“I have some in the cupboard,” she said. “If you want it, take it.”
Hmmm. I scoured Northeast Ohio for the stuff and my mother has some in her cupboard.
“It’s been in there for a while but it’s not open. It should still be good,” she said.
As I took the box of matzo meal down from the shelf, I couldn’t help but think that the only thing better than having a full cupboard is knowing that your mother has one, too.
Know how to tell if someone is really well off?
You can’t tell by the house she lives in or the car she drives. There is a good chance the bank owns both of those things, and she can just barely make the monthly payments.
You can’t tell by the clothes she wears or the vacations she takes. Those expenses could be piled up on a Visa card or two or three.
No, the only way to truly gauge the wealth of a person is by snooping in her cupboards.
For financial well-being is measured in rolls of toilet paper and paper towels and Scotch tape.
Or cans of chicken stock and tomato sauce.
Or jars of peanut butter and mayonnaise, bottles of ketchup and vegetable oil.
Yes, wealthy people have healthy cupboards.
It’s true.
One time a lot of years ago, we were overnight guests of one of my college friends.
She and I both got journalism degrees from Ohio State, but I used mine to get into newspapers and she used hers to get into corporate America.
While my career path may have been nobler, it certainly appeared hers was more lucrative.
And I figured that out by what I found under her bathroom sink. There was not one extra roll of toilet paper — like the cupboard in my bathroom — there were several packages of toilet tissue.
There was not one extra bar of soap, there were a dozen.
And there were extra tubes of toothpaste and shampoo and even toothbrushes.
Wow. I felt as if I was in a store.
How luxurious it was, I thought, to run out of something and find more in the cupboard.
I’m going to be like that someday, I thought.
Someday, I’m not going to have to run to the store every time I’m out of tissue or peanut butter or ketchup. Someday, I’m going to have extra.
And, for the most part, I have achieved that goal.
Now, if I run out of pancake syrup, I can go to the pantry and find a full bottle.
Or when my son dumps the last of the A1 sauce on his steak, there is often another bottle up in the cupboard.
Ahh, it’s great to find things in the cupboard.
I’ve been on a hunt for matzo meal for a couple of weeks. Matzo meal is that stuff that you use to make matzo balls to put in chicken soup.
I looked for it at the local grocery stores. I looked for it at the West Side Market. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I stopped over at my parents’ house the other day. My mom’s got a larder that could feed the town of Amherst in a natural disaster.
But it wasn’t always like that. There were five kids in the family. We were almost always out of one thing or another.
I told her about my futile search for matzo meal.
“I have some in the cupboard,” she said. “If you want it, take it.”
Hmmm. I scoured Northeast Ohio for the stuff and my mother has some in her cupboard.
“It’s been in there for a while but it’s not open. It should still be good,” she said.
As I took the box of matzo meal down from the shelf, I couldn’t help but think that the only thing better than having a full cupboard is knowing that your mother has one, too.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
We have a new perspective on the news
Published Jan. 7, 2008
Until last week, the newsroom had not been affected by the $11 million expansion and renovation project going on at The Chronicle.
Oh, sure, we've been a little inconvenienced.
Most of the parking lot was off-limits for a while, leaving us scrambling for parking spots.
And the back door, our main entrance, was closed off.
Pounding and jack-hammering have been made it difficult to talk on the phone.
And then there was the time we had no phones because water leaked through the roof into the phone control room.
Most everything has been coated with a thin layer of construction dust for a while but it has hardly been noticed by reporters and editors quite at home in years-old dusty piles of notes and notebooks.
At least we all had our own little familiar spots, dusty and noisy as they were.
Until last week.
We had to empty the newsroom so the workers can come in and build us a brand new one.
Do you have any idea how much stuff is in a newsroom?
It's not just desks and bodies, it's file cabinet after file cabinet and drawer after drawer of information gathered before a lot of us were even born.
What do you do with box scores from a 1950 Elyria High baseball game, photos from a 1970 car accident, results from the 1982 Lorain County Fair?
Will they ever be used again? Probably not. But can we bring ourselves to throw them away? It's tough.
And in the midst of all this priceless stuff are people, people who had to relocate until the newsroom construction is done.
"Get your stuff packed up," I started telling them a couple months ago.
But you see, there is a reason most of us got in the news business -- we can only do something when a deadline is imminent.
So there wasn't a lot of packing done until we got word a couple weeks ago that we had to be completely out of the newsroom by Jan. 4.
We hurriedly packed up our stuff and carried it to our temporary surroundings, a spot on the first floor that has already been remodeled.
We are a little crowded. The desks are arranged in three rows of back-to-back desks stretching from one side of the room to the other. Wires run across the floor to connect our computers.
But everyone seems to be working on rebuilding his or her own little area.
One reporter uses as a privacy screen a bulletin board onto which pictures of her children are tacked.
Other reporters have squeezed bookcases between their chairs and the wall and put on them essential reporter things -- like phone books and dictionaries and city directories and coffee mugs.
One wall is lined with more than a dozen file cabinets filled with things too precious to leave behind.
As exasperating as it was to get the staff to move -- and throw some things away -- it also made me remember why I like them all so much.
The newspaper isn't just a job to them. It's who they are.
In the piles of things that were headed for storage, I spotted a magazine holder, its metal sides carved into a word.
I picked it up, carried it down to our temporary quarters and perched it on top of a tall bookcase.
NEWS is the word carved into its sides.
And as it stands there, its metal shining out over us like a beacon, it feels as if we are home again.
Until last week, the newsroom had not been affected by the $11 million expansion and renovation project going on at The Chronicle.
Oh, sure, we've been a little inconvenienced.
Most of the parking lot was off-limits for a while, leaving us scrambling for parking spots.
And the back door, our main entrance, was closed off.
Pounding and jack-hammering have been made it difficult to talk on the phone.
And then there was the time we had no phones because water leaked through the roof into the phone control room.
Most everything has been coated with a thin layer of construction dust for a while but it has hardly been noticed by reporters and editors quite at home in years-old dusty piles of notes and notebooks.
At least we all had our own little familiar spots, dusty and noisy as they were.
Until last week.
We had to empty the newsroom so the workers can come in and build us a brand new one.
Do you have any idea how much stuff is in a newsroom?
It's not just desks and bodies, it's file cabinet after file cabinet and drawer after drawer of information gathered before a lot of us were even born.
What do you do with box scores from a 1950 Elyria High baseball game, photos from a 1970 car accident, results from the 1982 Lorain County Fair?
Will they ever be used again? Probably not. But can we bring ourselves to throw them away? It's tough.
And in the midst of all this priceless stuff are people, people who had to relocate until the newsroom construction is done.
"Get your stuff packed up," I started telling them a couple months ago.
But you see, there is a reason most of us got in the news business -- we can only do something when a deadline is imminent.
So there wasn't a lot of packing done until we got word a couple weeks ago that we had to be completely out of the newsroom by Jan. 4.
We hurriedly packed up our stuff and carried it to our temporary surroundings, a spot on the first floor that has already been remodeled.
We are a little crowded. The desks are arranged in three rows of back-to-back desks stretching from one side of the room to the other. Wires run across the floor to connect our computers.
But everyone seems to be working on rebuilding his or her own little area.
One reporter uses as a privacy screen a bulletin board onto which pictures of her children are tacked.
Other reporters have squeezed bookcases between their chairs and the wall and put on them essential reporter things -- like phone books and dictionaries and city directories and coffee mugs.
One wall is lined with more than a dozen file cabinets filled with things too precious to leave behind.
As exasperating as it was to get the staff to move -- and throw some things away -- it also made me remember why I like them all so much.
The newspaper isn't just a job to them. It's who they are.
In the piles of things that were headed for storage, I spotted a magazine holder, its metal sides carved into a word.
I picked it up, carried it down to our temporary quarters and perched it on top of a tall bookcase.
NEWS is the word carved into its sides.
And as it stands there, its metal shining out over us like a beacon, it feels as if we are home again.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Celluloid heroes have nothing on skunk man
Published Dec. 31, 2007
It was the final minutes of the triple-feature.
We had watched the "The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremacy."
And now we were watching the end of "The Bourne Ultimatum."
The boys were sprawled across the sectional pit.
I was on the floor in front of the TV.
And Jason Bourne was floating in New York’s East River.
Could he survive a 10-story fall and the shots fired at him as he fell?
In the midst of the suspense, I realized something menacing was in our own house.
I smelled it.
And suddenly, being face down in the East River didn’t seem so bad.
I got up the next morning and the smell of the menace from the night before still lingered.
A skunk.
My husband had found the source of the odor: The critter was hunkered down in a shoebox-size hole that allowed access to the plumbing under the pool house.
"Come see," my husband said.
We bent at the waist, squinting down into the hole while keeping our distance, ready to run if need be.
The skunk wasn’t moving but it looked as if it was watching us. Its teeth were clenching a stick like a dog clenches a bone.
"Let’s get something and poke him," I said to my husband.
"Poke him?"
"Maybe he’ll run away," I said.
My husband got the handle of a shovel and poked. I stood back.
"I think he’s dead," my husband said.
"We need to call someone," I said as I walked toward the house.
I went inside, pulled out the phone book and opened the yellow pages to Pest Control.
As I was dialing the phone, I looked out the window and saw my husband walking deliberately across the back yard.
He was carrying a handful of spear-like objects -- a spade, a tree trimmer and a couple other sticks. Draped over his other arm was a coiled orange extension cord.
He looked as if he was going to harpoon a seal.
A woman answered the phone.
"We don’t do skunks," she told me. "We only do bugs. You need critter control."
And then she rattled off some phone numbers of people who might be able to help.
I dialed one of the numbers.
"How much would you charge to get a dead skunk out from a hole in our yard?" I asked the man who answered.
"Are you sure he’s dead? $65."
Shoot, a bargain at twice the price.
I asked him how soon he could be here and went to tell the mighty hunter in the backyard that he was off the hook.
As we stood looking at the critter, we heard a car pull into the driveway.
The skunk man.
"That’s not a stick in its mouth," he said as he peered into the hole. "That’s an electrical wire. He must have been chewing on it and got zapped," he said, contorting his face into that of an electrocuted skunk.
My husband cut the electricity to the house so the critter control man didn’t end up like the critter. Then the skunk man went to work.
He thrust a grabber tool into the hole and yanked on the skunk’s head.
Whoa. That was it for me. I jumped back as the first try was unsuccessful and the critter’s head popped out of the tool.
But, a couple more yanks and it was out and safely deposited in a garbage bag.
Now, if only that grabber is strong enough to pull a body out of the East River …
It was the final minutes of the triple-feature.
We had watched the "The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremacy."
And now we were watching the end of "The Bourne Ultimatum."
The boys were sprawled across the sectional pit.
I was on the floor in front of the TV.
And Jason Bourne was floating in New York’s East River.
Could he survive a 10-story fall and the shots fired at him as he fell?
In the midst of the suspense, I realized something menacing was in our own house.
I smelled it.
And suddenly, being face down in the East River didn’t seem so bad.
I got up the next morning and the smell of the menace from the night before still lingered.
A skunk.
My husband had found the source of the odor: The critter was hunkered down in a shoebox-size hole that allowed access to the plumbing under the pool house.
"Come see," my husband said.
We bent at the waist, squinting down into the hole while keeping our distance, ready to run if need be.
The skunk wasn’t moving but it looked as if it was watching us. Its teeth were clenching a stick like a dog clenches a bone.
"Let’s get something and poke him," I said to my husband.
"Poke him?"
"Maybe he’ll run away," I said.
My husband got the handle of a shovel and poked. I stood back.
"I think he’s dead," my husband said.
"We need to call someone," I said as I walked toward the house.
I went inside, pulled out the phone book and opened the yellow pages to Pest Control.
As I was dialing the phone, I looked out the window and saw my husband walking deliberately across the back yard.
He was carrying a handful of spear-like objects -- a spade, a tree trimmer and a couple other sticks. Draped over his other arm was a coiled orange extension cord.
He looked as if he was going to harpoon a seal.
A woman answered the phone.
"We don’t do skunks," she told me. "We only do bugs. You need critter control."
And then she rattled off some phone numbers of people who might be able to help.
I dialed one of the numbers.
"How much would you charge to get a dead skunk out from a hole in our yard?" I asked the man who answered.
"Are you sure he’s dead? $65."
Shoot, a bargain at twice the price.
I asked him how soon he could be here and went to tell the mighty hunter in the backyard that he was off the hook.
As we stood looking at the critter, we heard a car pull into the driveway.
The skunk man.
"That’s not a stick in its mouth," he said as he peered into the hole. "That’s an electrical wire. He must have been chewing on it and got zapped," he said, contorting his face into that of an electrocuted skunk.
My husband cut the electricity to the house so the critter control man didn’t end up like the critter. Then the skunk man went to work.
He thrust a grabber tool into the hole and yanked on the skunk’s head.
Whoa. That was it for me. I jumped back as the first try was unsuccessful and the critter’s head popped out of the tool.
But, a couple more yanks and it was out and safely deposited in a garbage bag.
Now, if only that grabber is strong enough to pull a body out of the East River …
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Early bird still hungry after catching worm
Published Dec. 17, 2007
There weren’t many "Early Bird" shoppers at the mall Saturday morning.
But my friend and I were two of them.
I had asked her half-jokingly the night before if she would be up for some 6 a.m. shopping.
She said maybe she would.
I thought maybe I’d be awake at 6.
But I knew it was fat chance on both counts.
Yet, here we were, dragging ourselves into JC Penney’s before dawn.
The few people who were in the store were lugging to the register $200 kitchen mixers that were on sale for $99.
For a moment, I got caught up in the frenzy and thought that I, too, should buy one of these mixers. I didn’t really need one but I hated to pass up such a bargain.
But I came to my senses and went to find what I was really looking for.
You see, this Early Bird was looking for a whirlybird – two of them actually. Remote-controlled helicopters for my boys – my boys who -- at 21 and 26 – outgrew toys long ago.
Too bad their mom never outgrew the need to buy them.
Or should I say the need to hunt for them? That’s what it’s really about because there are few things more thrilling to a mother than snagging an elusive toy at Christmastime.
When my boys were growing up, people didn’t shop online. They actually went to the stores.
It was mother-vs.-mother in the toy aisle – and may the best mother win.
The most formidable battles took place the year that every kid in the world – including mine – wanted “Ghostbuster” action figures.
The factory shipped the toys to the stores in big boxes, each containing an assortment of characters from the movie. Handy, unless you were looking for the Marshmallow Man. For, although these big boxes contained lots and lots of action figures, they only contained one Marshmallow Man.
One.
And you’ve never experienced real terror unless you’ve been in the same toy aisle as a Marshmallow-Man-crazed mom.
Store clerks risked life and limb as they opened these boxes – a dozen moms hovering over them -- to put the figures on display.
That’s the Christmas shopping spirit that I miss – and try to re-create every year.
About a month ago, I spotted mini remote-controlled helicopters in a drug store ad.
I had visions of the boys flying them around the house on Christmas morning.
But, when I went to the store to buy them, they were sold out.
I felt a momentary jolt of Marshmallow Man mania.
From that day forward, I scoured the ads looking for mini helicopters.
I spotted them again but the result was the same: The store had none left.
And so it was this helicopter hunt that brought me to the mall before dawn on Saturday.
I have to admit I was hoping for a Marshmallow Man showdown with a crazed mom or two but, alas, I just walked into the toy aisle and plucked two mini radio-controlled helicopters off the shelf.
There wasn’t even another mom in sight. It seemed too easy.
But I found out something after I bought those helicopters. I found out that there may be better ones.
Apparently, there are battling helicopters that come two-to-a-package and they have lasers so you can shoot your opponent’s copter, sending it into a tailspin.
I wonder where I can find those. I could always return the ones I bought and get the battling ones. It’s probably too late to order them online.
But there is still a week before Christmas.
And that’s a lot of time for a mom on a mission.
There weren’t many "Early Bird" shoppers at the mall Saturday morning.
But my friend and I were two of them.
I had asked her half-jokingly the night before if she would be up for some 6 a.m. shopping.
She said maybe she would.
I thought maybe I’d be awake at 6.
But I knew it was fat chance on both counts.
Yet, here we were, dragging ourselves into JC Penney’s before dawn.
The few people who were in the store were lugging to the register $200 kitchen mixers that were on sale for $99.
For a moment, I got caught up in the frenzy and thought that I, too, should buy one of these mixers. I didn’t really need one but I hated to pass up such a bargain.
But I came to my senses and went to find what I was really looking for.
You see, this Early Bird was looking for a whirlybird – two of them actually. Remote-controlled helicopters for my boys – my boys who -- at 21 and 26 – outgrew toys long ago.
Too bad their mom never outgrew the need to buy them.
Or should I say the need to hunt for them? That’s what it’s really about because there are few things more thrilling to a mother than snagging an elusive toy at Christmastime.
When my boys were growing up, people didn’t shop online. They actually went to the stores.
It was mother-vs.-mother in the toy aisle – and may the best mother win.
The most formidable battles took place the year that every kid in the world – including mine – wanted “Ghostbuster” action figures.
The factory shipped the toys to the stores in big boxes, each containing an assortment of characters from the movie. Handy, unless you were looking for the Marshmallow Man. For, although these big boxes contained lots and lots of action figures, they only contained one Marshmallow Man.
One.
And you’ve never experienced real terror unless you’ve been in the same toy aisle as a Marshmallow-Man-crazed mom.
Store clerks risked life and limb as they opened these boxes – a dozen moms hovering over them -- to put the figures on display.
That’s the Christmas shopping spirit that I miss – and try to re-create every year.
About a month ago, I spotted mini remote-controlled helicopters in a drug store ad.
I had visions of the boys flying them around the house on Christmas morning.
But, when I went to the store to buy them, they were sold out.
I felt a momentary jolt of Marshmallow Man mania.
From that day forward, I scoured the ads looking for mini helicopters.
I spotted them again but the result was the same: The store had none left.
And so it was this helicopter hunt that brought me to the mall before dawn on Saturday.
I have to admit I was hoping for a Marshmallow Man showdown with a crazed mom or two but, alas, I just walked into the toy aisle and plucked two mini radio-controlled helicopters off the shelf.
There wasn’t even another mom in sight. It seemed too easy.
But I found out something after I bought those helicopters. I found out that there may be better ones.
Apparently, there are battling helicopters that come two-to-a-package and they have lasers so you can shoot your opponent’s copter, sending it into a tailspin.
I wonder where I can find those. I could always return the ones I bought and get the battling ones. It’s probably too late to order them online.
But there is still a week before Christmas.
And that’s a lot of time for a mom on a mission.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
A Griswold, er, Ewald family Christmas
In a scene reminiscent of the movie, "Christmas Vacation," my husband and my brother drag what will be the Ewald Family Christmas Tree out of the tree farm.
They dragged the tree out of the trailer hitched to the Explorer and into the house.
It took two of them.
My brother and my husband yanked and grunted as they pulled the giant evergreen up the front steps and into our foyer.
It was a little rough making the turn into the living room but, luckily, it only sounded as if the woodwork was getting ripped off.
They laid the tree down gently in the center of the room like the prize it was. We all just stood there admiring it and the smell it was giving the house.
Then my brother said something that one of us had to say sooner or later.
“Think it’ll fit?”
We all looked at the tree and then up the wall to the 15-foot ceiling.
No one said anything in response but my husband and I both began pacing off the tree. He on one side, me on the other.
“It should,” we said in unison.
“I don’t know,” my brother said, looking back up to the ceiling.
“Maybe you should have cut some off before you brought it in,” his wife said.
We hated to cut any more of it off. After all, we had already left the bottom five feet of it in the forest.
“Let’s try to stand it up,” my husband said.
Then, he and my brother got down on their bellies and shoved the trunk into a huge round plastic tree stand and screwed it in.
“OK, you hold the stand while we walk it up,” my brother said to me.
I walked around the gigantic green bush and grabbed a hold of a bottom branch. Soon the tree was coming at me. I put my foot on the tree stand to help ease it to the ground.
Three quarters of the way up, they stopped pushing. The tree was lodged at a 45-degree angle.
I guess it was a little too tall.
The two of them lowered it back to the floor.
Now what?
“Let’s take it back outside. I’ll get my chainsaw,” my brother said.
Take it back outside?
“Just cut it in here,” my husband said.
“Use a chainsaw in the house?” my brother said. “Not a good idea.”
“Not a good idea at all,” his wife echoed.
But the next thing I knew, my brother was firing up his chainsaw. In the living room. Two minutes and a lot of gas fumes and wood chips later, our tree was three feet shorter. And 10 minutes after that, it was standing upright. The biggest tree I had ever seen.
That was Saturday. Ever since then, my husband has been stringing lights on it. He dragged down from the attic every box, bag and ball of lights we had.
Up the ladder, string some lights. Down the ladder, get some more. He did over and over and over. But at some point he ran out of lights. Then, the drill was up the ladder, string some lights, down the ladder, go to the Walgreens, buy some more and up the ladder string some lights.
The tree is beautiful now, lit – at last count -- with 1,300 twinkling little colored lights.
There was a message on my phone today. It was from my brother who cut a tree almost as big as ours. We helped him get his tree to stand upright in his house before he helped us.
“Just wondering how your tree is coming,” his message said. “Ours is done, all decorated.”
Wow, he’s done already. Wonder how he did that so fast.
I’d ask my husband but he’s not home.
He just ran over to the Walgreens.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)