Ginger Nethery

Early December 2009 Suzette and I went together to purchase a Christmas tree for her cute, little apartment. The operative word being little... Well, it had snowed and rained for several days so alot of the tree lots had soaking wet trees in them, which Suzette did not want to deal with so we ended up at Home Depot, where most of their trees were under some protection. Of course buying a tree from them you have a stack of trees tied up and a few that have been untied. We thought we'd be so clever as to buy one already tied up that way we wouldn't have to worry about getting into the car. So we found one that was tall enough but not too tall. We began by looking at 7-8 foot tall trees and then realized her ceilings probably weren't that high, so we started looking at 5-6 feet trees and found one that was reasonably tall. It was all tied up, easy to carry and so we took it up to the front where they did their usual trim an inch off and then tied it up some more.

When we got it back to Suzette's apartment and placed it in the stand all I could picture, as we prepared to untie it, was the scene from Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation where the tree limbs unfurled into huge branches breaking windows and furniture alike. Alas, we were lucky it wasn't that wide (thank goodness). We started assessing it though and soon found that it looked like someone had taken a huge bite out of one side of the tree. The top of it looked good and the bottom look right, but in the middle of the tree was the huge inward curve. We laughed and repositioned the tree, but it still was visible, so we repositioned the tree again and it was still visible. Finally we got the tree turned enough that you could no longer see the big bite out of it, but we knew it was there. We laughed at how we thought we were being so resourceful to buy a tree still tied up only to find out we had bought one with a giant bite taken out of it. It was definitely a fun evening and that little bite tree stood for the next month still green and decorated til just after the first of the year. I was fortunate and lucky to be part of the first Christmas Tree experience in the cute, little apartment on Monroe Ave and it will forever be known as the little bite tree!!!

Love ya Suzette!! Happy Birthday!!