Tree Chopping

There were two big days in December when we took part in Christmas tree chopping parties.  We always got our tree the first week in December with the first group.  Before my parents moved to Placerville when I was one year old, they had a busy social life with other young couples in the Concord and Walnut Creek area.  They arranged monthly dinners together and called themselves the “Knife and Fork” group.  Later this idea was duplicated in Placerville as “Couple’s Gourmet.”  Since my parents defected to a world of pine trees, the Knife and Fork group trouped up to the foothills with a fresh batch of kids to reunite and also score a fresh cut Christmas tree.

Apple Hill was primarily known for its many apple barns selling absolutely everything that could be made from apples.  There were also wineries, pumpkin patches for Halloween and many Christmas tree farms.  A favorite of all tree farms was “Santa’s Acres.”  This was the nicest, best organized and run farm and usually there was good old St. Nick on hand to listen to our Christmas dreams and to hand out candy canes.  There was also a pyramid of hay bales to climb on and with the band of kids along for the trip––in those days before ipods, iphones, ipads and Game Boys––these things went a long way to keep us entertained.  My mother did seem to take forever to pick out a tree.  I would point out several that looked good enough to me, but Mom had to walk around them, check for uniformity, measure the height and look over all the trees to make sure she had the best one.  Most years, Santa’s Acres had the tree we needed, but if not, we traipsed to several other farms and all this seemed to take up most of the day.

Of course there was a stop for a picnic lunch and apple pie from High Hill Ranch, which had a fishing pond and a mall of local artists selling their arts and crafts to add variety to the day.  Later on, the group headed down the hill with threes strapped to the roofs of the cars, twenty minutes or so off the highway into Coloma to have a big dinner at the Vineyard House.  There was chicken pot pie, thick baked carrots and bread pudding made by an actual grandmother in the kitchen.  I loved the Vineyard House because it was old, haunted (so everyone said) and had a beautifully spooky graveyard across the street.  After dinner, the Knife and Fork group had about a two hour trip home, but we had a short twenty minutes.

The next trip involved families whose mothers and wives belonged to the American Association of University Women.  This was a big group of people and thanks to the fact that Mr. Peek owned the Michigan Cal Lumber Company, we all drove way up into the El Dorado National Forrest and the snow to cut down a blue spruce right out of nature.  Since we already had our Christmas tree by this point, my brother and I would chop down our own small trees to have in our rooms.  Later that night, the adults would go to a big dinner together while the kids all stayed home with baby-sitters, but we had a great time decorating our own little trees and falling asleep to the blinking colored lights forming magical patterns on the wall.

Before hiking into the woods to find a tree, the group would all park on a good flat open area for a picnic in the snow.  Everyone brought their own lunches, but Mrs. Peek always had hot chocolate for everyone and Carl Borelli, who owned a fish market, always had an open table of shell fish to sample and taught me how to swallow clams on the half shell.  The kids were some older and some younger and some that I had been in school with from kindergarten to high school graduation.  How often does that happen?  Even as an adult, when I would occasionally join in on the annual tree chopping trip and the kids were bringing along a new generation of babies, a smattering of my age group would be there when they could.  Around the time that the group of original couples turned sixty, the tradition was brought to a close, but for three decades it served as a wonderful part of the Christmas season of a kind that can only happen in small town America, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

The tree farms were numerous enough that the City of Placerville felt they could put up a sign stating that the town was the “Christmas Tree Capital of the World.”  To prove it, the lenghth of town along Highway 50 was lined with Christmas trees lit with colored lights.  Near the old Town Hall was a very large pine tree that was also decorated in colored lights.  A drive through the area at night was a magical vision.  Add to that the wreaths hung on the Main Street lamp posts and all the shop windows decorated with holiday cheer and you had the picture of an old fashioned Christmas that you might find on a Christmas card.  In fact, you could find it on a Christmas card thanks to the painter of light, Thomas Kinkade.

My mother, being the stay at home mom that she was, hand made enough ornaments to cover a six foot tree.  Eventually, the fresh cut trees became a good looking fake tree and the decorations became glass store bought ornaments in wine colors and gold, which is still the theme of the tree to this day.  My parents still decorate the entire house from top to bottom with Christmas ornamentation in every corner, even though my brother and I are rarely home to see it.  We actually have Christams day in Salinas where my mother grew up.  The Grandparents lived there and my mother’s sister lived down the block, so now that I fly in from New York, I don’t always get back to Placerville to visit the “Christmas Tree Capital of the World.”  However, when I do visit, it is nice to see that long row of colorful trees along Highway 50 and the whole town looking like Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas card.  He painted Placerville to look like it did in the 1920s, but although any old timer can point out the many changes, it doesn’t look so different in person than it does in those nostalgic Kinkade paintings.