By this time every December growing up my hunts got more specific. All fall I had kept my eyes open for pretty cedar trees that were the right size and shape, marking their location in my mental GPS. Back then it actually worked and would hold many locations.

    But around the first of December I got serious, searching for the perfect tree. It had to be as perfect shape as a wild tree could be, and as tall as possible without being more than seven feet tall, about as high as I could reach.

    I hunted a lot on an old farm about a mile from my house. The fields were mostly overgrown with broom straw and weeds but the field edges of briar, brush and small trees gave rabbits and quail perfect places to hide. The old fields still provided a variety of food for them.

    Cedar trees grew in the field edges and in the old fields, too. Since they could get sun from all angles out in the field, they were conical shaped and full all the way around.  Trees near the woods usually had a gap on the side that did not get full sun so the ones in the open were the best.

    About a week before Christmas Day I would direct daddy to the best tree I had found.  He drove our old Chevy pickup pretty much anywhere although it did not have four-wheel drive. Since the best tree was usually in the open, it was not hard to drive to it.

    Daddy “let” me lay on the ground and saw the tree down, using a lumber saw. It’s fine teeth made the cutting slow and took a while but for a preteen or teenager, it was not too bad. I tried to get a nice smooth even cut for the tree stand we would make with 2x4s.

    We would also cut some limbs from other cedar trees that were not candidates for “The” tree, even for the future. Those limbs were used by mama to decorate the mantel where our stocking were hung, and a center piece for the table.

    Getting the tree in to the house and set up was not hard with several folks to help. Within minutes the house would smell of cedar, a wonderful smell that would be reinforced by mantel and table decorations that would last until the day after Christmas.

    We didn’t have a lot of money back then and most of our tree decorations, as well as house decorations, were homemade. I brought in sweetgum tree balls and small pinecones from the few trees that produced them. I still do not know what kind of pine tree produced those two-inch-long cones but they were rare.

    We would spray the pinecones and sweetgum balls with silver or gold paint and sprinkle glitter on them.   They were hung from the tree with short pieces of colorful yarn. We would also cut strips of colorful construction paper and make chains out of loops of it for the tree.

We did have bought lights, big bulb strings that were very colorful. The strangest “lights” for the tree were ancient small pans that clipped to the tree and had a spike for  a small candle.  We were not allowed to light the candles except for a few minutes each night while mama and daddy watched carefully.

There were some very old ball decorations that had been in the family for years and we were very careful handling them. They were beautiful, some shaped like angels, some like Santa and some like bells and balls, and all very colorful.

Store bought tinsel was made from metal, I think it was strands of tinfoil, and mama would not let us kids touch it. She hung each stand carefully, placing it just right. After Christmas she would remove it just as carefully and put it back on the cardboard backing and into a pack for next year. I felt like we were rich the year mama said throw the tree out with the tinsel on it, we would buy more next year!

Undecorating the tree was a sad time and I did not help much, I wanted to get out in the woods with my new boxes of .22 bullets and .410 shells!!