PIKE COUNTY, Mo. — Following is the 50th anniversary edition of a previously-published true story by contributing writer Brent Engel in honor of his father, John Theodore “Jack” Engel, who died on Dec. 22, 2013, at age 85, and family friend Larry Eilers, who passed on March 19, 2020, at age 80. 

To me, the scents of the season are just as important as the sights.

   And for that reason, Christmas 1972 is one I’ll never forget.

   In our house, the holiday just wasn’t the same without a real tree. To earn a little extra scratch, my father had joined a farmer friend, Larry, in an agricultural business venture.

   By the time I was nine years old, the firs and pines they had planted were tall enough to catch the eyes of customers.

   The trees had been planted a quarter-mile from the barn where Larry kept his hogs. When he wasn’t teaching classes at our small-town high school or doing jobs around the house, Dad helped Larry.

   My father had grown up on a farm, one that in 2022 is still in the family after 192 years, and so he loved the outdoor work.

   Dad traveled the four miles to Larry’s farm in an old Ford pickup he had bought for $100. It chugged and heaved and hardly topped 40 miles an hour. It was a piece of crap, and it certainly smelled like it with all of the manure that had been scooped into and out of the bed.

   If there was one thing Dad loved more than raising Christmas trees, it was decorating Christmas trees.

   By tradition, our family hung the holly and all the trimmings the first weekend in December. Had Dad had his druthers, the decorations would have stayed up all year, but Mom proved that Scrooges do exist.

   On the Day the Engel Family Got Its Christmas Tree 1972, the forecast called for rain changing to sleet and then snow.

   Larry had already made plans to take his wife Christmas shopping, so he wouldn’t be available to help with the tree cutting. For the first time in my life, Dad asked if I wanted to tag along.

   My brother, who was seven, was upset to tears because he wasn’t included. That made my quick, affirmative answer all the more satisfying.

   “You can go next year,” Dad said to my brother as we headed to the garage.

   The first drops of rain hit the windshield of the old junker as we pulled out of the driveway. By the time we got to the farm, there was a steady shower. The temperature also was starting to fall and the wind had picked up.

   “Larry asked me to stop by and make sure the hogs are OK,” Dad said to me as we drove past the tree stand along the gravel road leading to the hog lot.

   The old pickup sputtered to a stop beside the manure pit.

   “You wait here,” Dad said before getting out and walking into the barn.

   When he emerged 10 minutes later, the wind was swirling even stronger.

   “Gave them some new straw and water,” Dad said.  “Now, let’s get that tree and get home.”

   Dad fired up the truck and drove to the tree patch. Water glistened off the needles as he took the spiked-tooth saw in hand and walked toward a fir that looked perfect.

   I held the stalk as Dad bent down to work at its base. Sleet began to pelt us just as the saw cut through the last fibers.

   “It’s getting colder,” Dad said. “Let’s load this up and go.”

   We put the tree in the bed of the pickup and slowly rolled back toward the blacktop that would lead us home. As we pulled into the driveway 15 minutes later, I saw the lights of our living room through the ice that the windshield wipers had trouble removing. It looked so warm and cozy.

   Dad and I pulled the tree up the sidewalk to the front door and noticed that the watery branches had now been locked in a kind of frozen grandeur.

   We got the tree into the house and put it on the pedestal that was surrounded by plastic. Without saying anything, we congratulated ourselves on a job well done. We even decided to go to the kitchen and get a couple of Christmas cookies before starting the decorating.

   Mother was finishing up supper and told us that the treats would have to wait.

   “Don’t you want to see the tree, Mom?” I asked.

   “After supper,” she said. “Now, you and your brother go wash your hands.”

   The table was filled with meat loaf, macaroni and vegetables as the four of us bowed our heads to pray. Just after thanking the Lord, Mom caught the first whiff of a devilish odor.

   “What’s that smell?” she said.

   Dad and I looked at each other blankly.

   “I don’t smell anything,” he said.

   “It smells like a hog lot,” Mom countered. “Oh, no, you didn’t.”

   She got up from the table and stomped toward the living room. At least as long as I’d known her, and I assumed in all of her 42 years, Mother had never uttered a vulgarity. But that changed the Day the Engel Family Got Its Christmas Tree 1972.

   “Get in here and get this thing out,” she yelled at my father, just after the four-letter word erupted from her lips. I think she put the letters “a-t-i-o-n” after her choice, but I still counted it.

   Anyway, putting a wet tree in the back of a truck used to haul manure was definitely a mistake. Now, Dad was a pretty smart guy, but sometimes everyone is a couple of jing-tinglers short of an elf convention. He had figured the droplets would wash the poo away. Instead, the freezing rain had attached bits of ca-ca to the needles.

   As long as they were frozen, everything was fine. But in the warmth of a 70-degree house, they had returned to their stinky selves.

   Soon, the entire house reeked. The outside temperature was 20 degrees. The neighbors must have wondered a little more than usual about the sanity of the Engel family, since Mother had opened all the windows and doors.

   Now, it was my Father’s turn to swear. Usually, he did so out of Mom’s earshot. This time, there was nowhere to hide. He grumbled and groused under his breath as he pulled the tree out into the front yard.

   “No, that’s not good enough,” Mom said from the doorway.

   “What the h— do you want me to do, take it back?” Dad asked.

   At that moment, I got one of my first lessons in the difference between men and women. The fairer sex has no sense of exaggeration.

   “Yes,” Mom told him. “Take it back to the farm.”

   “Are you outta your d— mind?” Dad said, saying the first four words loudly and muffling the last two.

   “You’d better get going,” Mother said.

   Alas, you may think that the story ends there, but just wait.

   “Come on,” Dad dejectedly said to me. “Get your coat on.”

   My brother started laughing as I put on my parka. Dad and I loaded the stinky tree into the truck and fired up the engine as snow started to fall. The streets were like a hockey rink as we headed out of town.

   “A 15-minute trip is going to take us 45,” Dad said as we crept along.

   Even with the bad weather, the journey was mostly over flat ground. The worst part would be Pulaski Curve. Not only was it shaped like a slithering snake, but part of it was on a hill.

   Luckily, a family lived along the stretch, so if we ran into trouble we could always stop and call for help. (There were no cell phones then, dear child). I didn’t know the parents, but their kids had been in one of Dad’s classes about 10 years previously.

   As we approached the curve, I could feel the back end of the truck start to slide. Luckily, no one else had ventured out. We skidded sideways across both lanes until the truck nipped a “curve ahead” sign.

   At that point, we were only going about five miles per hour, so there wasn’t much damage. But the impact knocked the stinky tree out of the bed and into the middle of the road. Dad was able to pull on the steering wheel and keep us out of the ditch. The truck righted itself in the wrong lane.

   “Oh, be joyful,” Dad said as he shook his head and guided the pickup back to the right side of the road. “Well, we’ll have to go get it. We don’t want to cause an accident.”

   Unfortunately, conditions didn’t make a turn-around that easy. Dad finally decided that he could swing into a y-shaped intersection about two miles ahead, just before the turn to the tree farm, and get back to the blacktop without too much trouble.

   We made the turn-around without a hitch, but it took a bit to get back to Pulaski Curve.

   “What the…” Dad’s voice trailed off as he stared at snow falling on the empty road. “What happened to the tree?”

   Dad stopped the truck and we got out to take a look. We slip-walked from one side of the blacktop to the other. We checked out the ditches in front of us and behind us. Nothing.

   We were about to give up when Dad’s attention was caught by a trail in the snow leading up a lane to a house. It looked like something had been dragged along the ground.

   “It couldn’t be,” Dad said before he started laughing. “Oh, my, are they in for a surprise.”

   “Shouldn’t we go up there and tell them?” I asked.

   “No,” Dad said. “Let them enjoy the aroma of Christmas. Besides, their kids were jerks in school.”

   Both of us laughed as we got back into the warm pickup for the trek home.

   The next morning, Dad got a call from Larry.

   “Hey, someone chucked a perfectly good Christmas tree in the ditch along Pulaski Curve,” Larry said.

   “Oh, really?” Dad asked. “Well, don’t…”

   “I picked it up on my way back from town this morning,” Larry interrupted. “It’s in the shed outside. Now, I don’t have to go out and cut one. I can just put it up in the living room.”