One of my earliest memories of buying a Christmas tree was when I was 9 years old. My mother and I went out to get the tree on Christmas eve. “It will be cheaper then.” My mother said. “They don’t want to get stuck with any trees and we’ll get a good price.” Was her reasoning.

So we went to see the tree man, a rare white man in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1963, and looked over the remaining trees. My mother chose one and asked how much. He said $4 and my mother offered two. He let it go for three. She and I carried the seven-foot Douglas fir home.

The past couple of years the price of trees has been astronomical, so we haven’t bought a tree since 2020, when I paid $45 for a 4-footer. In 2021 we went to a place in Kingston, where we’d been visiting friends and got a bunch of free branches, the cut-offs from big trees and Danusia made some kind of green arrangement on the wall. We did the same last year with local cast-offs.

This year Danusia asked the local tree seller on Edward M. Morgan Place (where I got the $45 tree) How much the 4-footers were. They said $100. No way we are paying a hundred bucks for something we have to throw away in a few weeks. I reluctantly started planning for another fake tree. Then something interesting happened. I overheard my good friend Tommy, the housepainter arguing with his wife on the phone.

“What was that about?” I asked curiously, though it was none of my business.

“Sarah doesn’t like the tree I bought.” He said. “What’s wrong with the tree?” I had to know.

“Nothing. It’s a great tree. It’s an awesome tree.”

Sarah had just come home from work to discover the not tall enough tree in her Livingroom and had called Tommy to complain about it.

“So how come she doesn’t like it?” I asked.

“She says it’s too small. Says she’s taller than the tree.”

“How tall is the tree?” I asked.

“It’s six feet! At least I think it’s six feet. Taller than me.”

Well, Tommy is about an inch shorter than I, and I’ve shrunken to 5’8 ½ (the half inch is important to someone that used to be 5’10) but Tommy hasn’t reached the shrinking stage yet. Neither has Sarah, who happens to be taller than Tommy. So, I can see her point.

“What are you going to do about it?” I asked.

“Get another tree, wadda think?” “What are you going to do with the tree Sarah doesn’t like?” I asked.

“Get rid of it, I guess.”

“Can I have it?”

“If you come get it you can have it. When you gonna come?” I had to think about that. Tommy and I were at a meeting in the East Village, close to his home on East 4^th Street. But I live on 156^th Street and Riverside Drive. I would have to drive our car downtown to get the tree. And there was the problem.

Normally the solution would be to ask my wife Danusia to drive down for the tree, it is after all her car. But Danusia was in Kentucky on a job. If I wanted the tree, I was going to have to do it myself, and that was a scary proposition. It’s scary because the last time I’d driven in the city alone was in 1982 and I was drunk at the time. Wasn’t thinking about the consequences. I didn’t think of the consequences when I said to Tommy “I can come in the morning.”

“Early, come early, Xavier.”
“I’ll be there at 10.”

Of course, that night I didn’t get much sleep, thinking about having to drive the car all by myself the next morning. You see, I just got my license 9 years ago, at the age of 60. And since then, the only driving I’ve really done is when we visit friends upstate, and then only on fairly empty country roads. I can’t have more than a total of 10 hours behind the wheel, and almost all of them with someone by my side saying, “watch out!” every time I make a mistake. The thought of running the errand was daunting.

I lay in bed thinking of NYC traffic and NYC drivers, remembering the onslaught of cars jockeying for position on Delancey Street when I took driving lessons from Mr. No at the Far East driving school nine years ago. Mr. No shouting “You go! Go!” When I didn’t react fast enough.

I finally fell asleep with the thought I could still punk out in the morning, call Tommy and say I wasn’t coming. I thought of asking him to bring the tree up in his truck, but I knew he would just laugh.

Saturday morning, I got up and told myself to grow up. “Just get in the car and go get the tree.” I said to myself. What could possibly happen? Then a million things that could happen rushed through my mind, none of them good.

The fastest way down would be to take the Henry Hudson, and the entrance to the HH is just a left turn and 200 feet from the driveway of our garage. But driving on the highway with the maniacal New York drivers going faster than they should scared the shit out of me. So, I got on my computer and mapped out a route going down Riverside Drive and then whatever local streets I could use to get to East 4^th Street and Avenue A. Why couldn’t Tommy live on the West side?

I went down to the garage level with the car keys and my homemade directions I’d scribbled on a piece of paper. I got behind the wheel and steeled myself for an adventure. I managed to back the car out of our space without hitting anything and found myself on 158^th Street heading east.

The worst thing that happened to me on the way down was not realizing the 11^th Avenue splits at 40^th Street, the right 2 lanes keep going down to 24^th Street where I planned to make a left and go across to 7^th Avenue, my gateway to the East side. So not knowing that and being in the far-left lane I ended up on the nightmare of 40^th street, with all of the tunnel traffic and signs and little streets that go God knows where. I kept praying I wouldn’t end up in New Jersey. I managed to make it to a light on 9^th Avenue, where I was suddenly accosted by the squeegee men. Squeegee men! I thought Giuliani had gotten rid of them! But no, here was one throwing dirty water on the windshield.

“Hey! Stop! I don’t have any change!” I shouted. I half expected the guy to say he takes Venmo, but he just scowled and walked away leaving me with a sudsy window. I now know better than to drive on 40^th Street.

After getting to 7^th Avenue, it was smooth sailing. I made a left turn on West 4^th and was actually able to answer Tommy’s frantic text messages of “Where are you?” while waiting for a red light somewhere between there and 1^st Avenue. “Almost there.” I texted from somewhere around the Bowery.

I pulled up to a fire hydrant just short of Tommy’s building and called him. I assumed he was upstairs waiting for my call.

“Where are you?” He asked.

“By the fire hydrant.” I replied, and in an instant, he sprang into view with the tree on his shoulder. He’d been waiting in front of the building.

“You’re late. I’ve got pancakes on the stove!” I looked at my watch and it was 10:10. Only ten minutes late, but I wasn’t going to get into an argument over it.

The tree was semi-wrapped up in blue painter’s tape, after all the guy is a professional painter, so it was that much easier to get it into the back of our “Sports wagon,” as the manufacturer likes to call it. I call it “little blue,” since it’s small and dark blue. I had already put the back seats down, so we wrestled it into the car, and I was off to my less stressful trip home. I stopped by a guy selling trees on Hudson Street and bought a green plastic tree stand, I’d thrown away the red and green metal stand we’d had for years when we’d decided trees were too expensive in 2020.

I got home without any further drama and was grateful we live in a building with an elevator to the garage. I took the tree upstairs, gave it a “fresh cut” with my power saw and set it up. It may be second hand, but it sure is beautiful, like Tommy said. But I’m glad it was too short for Sarah’s taste.