Often, December days were a steel gray that usually meant it's going to start snowing any minute, and that early Saturday morning in mid-December 1956 was no exception. Eagerly scanning the sky from the great picture window in the living room, the outline of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance, it was both my birthday — I was 10 years old today! — and Daddy would be home any minute from working the night shift where he was the manager of the local airport, Preston Glenn Airport it was called back then, in
A bowl of hot oatmeal gulped down without tasting and less than an hour later, I was bundled in layers of flannel, warm boots and a wooly cap sitting in the front seat of our old '49
Just before dark, cold, hungry, arms full of running cedar and mistletoe, mom met us at the door to help relieve us of our bounty. As Daddy dragged our prize through the door, Mom looked it up and down and said what she had said every year since I could remember: "I hope it's not too big so we don't have to cut half of it off like we always do." It was, and we did.
By bedtime our prize "catch" was adorned with treasures carefully packed away in the attic from
Fifty-four years have passed, as have both Mom and Daddy, since that day. There has never been another Christmas quite like that one. That's because, after all, there can be only one Perfect Tree.
Adult writing