The Christmas Tree Job

It’s Christmas time and the season is filled with the activities that make it so special. Christmas parties, greeting old friends, gathering with family, decorating the house and of course getting the tree. When you are hunting for that special tree in your local tree lot, I would like you to consider how that tree got there. It starts on a tree farm about 5 years before you see it. That tree is raised and nurtured by the owners of the farm. It is shaped just before being cut down. When they shape a tree they trim the tree into its conical form, making it as neat as possible. The tree is then cut down, piled on a truck and taken to the production area. Here the trees are removed from the truck, graded by height, fullness and variety and run through a baler that ties them up for shipping. This is where my story begins. I had recently returned to active duty in the Navy and was stationed at the Submarine base near Bremerton. We had 2 boys, one a newborn, when we moved into the second house we were going to rent until we could buy one. We unfortunately ran into some money issues when the new rental cost us $900.00 in electricity the first month we used the electric baseboard heaters. I was working the swing shift at the base in the air and hydraulic repair shop at the refit facility. I started work at 3:30 (1530 for the service people) and got off at 11:30 (2330). We needed extra money for Christmas and to pay for the electricity. I found work with a local tree farm for the holidays that started at 8 am and I could leave early enough to get to work at the base. I didn’t have all the waterproof gear that some of the more knowledgeable people had and loading Christmas trees in western Washington in November and December is anything but dry work. There were people that did the work all year round working on the farms as well as in the shipping area. There were others like me who just needed a job for the holidays. The trees we loaded into semis were going to Southern California, Arizona and Alaska. As the “new” guy and low man on the totem pole, I was selected to load the semi-trucks. As with all production style operations, there were certain ways to load trees that will allow for the proper number of trees to get into the trailer. We would receive the tree off a conveyer, drag it to the front and stand them up as best as we could. The first third might stand tall but as the number of trees were brought in the base width pushed the stacks flatter and flatter until we weren’t standing the trees up but laying them down. In the process of loading the trees, if you lost your footing and fell, you could get buried quickly. Again, this is where the getting wet part of the job was. I had on long johns, 2 pairs of pants, two sweatshirts, a jacket, gloves and work boots with 2 pairs of socks. It only took 15 minutes in the first semi-truck to soak through everything I had on. For 6 weeks I came home wet and cold, jumped into the shower for 10 minutes, dressed, grabbed my dinner and hit the road to get to the base for shift. I won’t lie, it was not my favorite job, but it paid alright, and I was introduced to the other aspects of the business as I worked. Days that I stayed out of the trucks loading trees and got put on the baling line or grading trees were drier times and more fun. When I finished working on December 20^th, we got a free tree and a pickup box full of cedar rounds that were dry and burned really well. I will never forget my time working at the tree farm. Every time I smell a Christmas tree or walk past a lot in front of a store, I will remember my Christmas job.