Back in 1978 my dad Bob Hansen and I set out on a cold sunny Sunday afternoon in December to find my first live Christmas tree. I was 16 years old and had never had a real living Christmas tree.
We set out to Darrel Hundley’s farm along Bull Run Creek. Dad and I had never done anything like this alone, as I was one of eight Hansen kids, I felt special on this day. Dad carried a bow saw and I was on the lookout for the perfect tree.
After about a two-hour search, we spotted a cedar tree that was perfect in shape and size; we thought. Dad sawed it down and he took the heavy end and I took the top part of the tree. Here’s where the fun begins. We had to cross Bull Run Creek in order to get back to dad’s pickup truck. We had crossed it once already with no problem taking our shoes off and rolling our britches up past our knees and tying our shoes around our necks.
It’s December and the running water is very cold. I pulled my shoes off, rolled up my britches, and stepped back into the creek with my shoes tied around my neck.
Dad says to me “I’m gonna throw my boots over to the other side this time since I’ll have the tree in my hands”. I replied that’s ok with me. He proceeded to take one boot at a time and toss it across Bull Run, meanwhile I’m still standing in the creek waiting on him.
He swings his arm back and throws his first boot, it landed perfectly on the far bank barely making it. Now the second boot. He swings back his arm again and a single tree limb hanging over the middle of the creek grabs his boot lace and wraps it like a ribbon round and round.
My dad was in the Navy and could hang with the best of the Sailors. Needless to say, he shouted a few expletives.
Meanwhile, I’m still standing in the COLD creek with numb feet now. He says to me “you stand underneath my boot and I’ll shake the tree”. It takes several minutes and several tugs before the boot falls. It falls right between my hands and into the COLD Bull Run Creek.
I’m laughing so hard I almost wet myself. Meanwhile, dad’s on the far bank yelling expletives again at me. If you knew my dad, he wasn’t a man with lots of patience.
I grab his boot out of the creek and dump the water out of it. Needless to say, he wasn’t a happy camper putting his foot into that soaked, wet boot. We get the tree loaded in the truck and head back to Big Ridge State Park Road to home.
Proud of our beautiful tree, mom comes out to see what we found and says “ahh that’s an ole Cedar tree”. Not what she wanted in her house. See she’s from Vermont where beautiful fir trees flourish. Well, the Cedar tree was too large and we ended up using a fake tree again.