So Much for the Game and Decorations

The Super Bowl has thumped, thudded, pummeled and roistered its way out of town, and those of us who live near the great amphitheater can get out of our driveways now and go about our appointed rounds. Not that it’s a major inconvenience, but you can’t plan on leaving the house for three hours before the game begins or for three hours after the final buzzer, lest you go north on Linda Vista toward the hills. You could turn around and come back the coast road after you get to Santa Barbara.

The cops make Linda Vista a one-way street going north so all of the traffic can head toward the Rose Bowl. You can go up to the 210, go west to the Glendale Freeway, then south to the 134 and you’re loose in the big world. It’s just that I always feel there should be something dramatic about being so close to the Rose Bowl on a Rose Bowl game day or a Super Bowl day. Actually, it’s nothing at all if you remember to buy the cat food.

Patsy and I stayed home and watched the game for the reasons mentioned above. People asked us over to watch the game, but we didn’t feel they’d want us to stay until 9 or 10 o’clock, so we didn’t go.

By now all of the Giant fans are safely back in their terrible weather, or they will be in a couple of days. After the sunshine this week, it is inevitable that some of them will decide that this is the year they will move to California.

I have never been to Denver except to change airplanes for Aspen, but I understand it gets pretty nippy there, too. I almost feel guilty sitting in the patio sipping iced tea, but not guilty enough to leave.

Now that the Super Bowl is a statistic, it’s time to face the New Year, sound of limb and strong of heart. I’d be a little better able to do that if the Christmas decorations were down. Every one of those dear little ornaments has to be taken down, wrapped in tissue and put in the large cartons that must first be taken down from the attic.

The reason I have always left the stuff up so long is that there is so much of it, it takes a great deal of strength and determination to get started. Do not feel that I am occasioning a fire hazard because of a dry Christmas tree. Patsy and I bought a fake one three years ago, and although I felt traitorous for a while, I soon recovered when I saw that the needles didn’t drop.

I used to go down to the old train tracks and pick out a tree and have it tied on the car and drive it home. Then there was nothing to do but drag it in the house, put the 12 volumes of the encyclopedia on the crossbars of the base and start sweeping up needles.

Somehow, buying the tree out of a stack by a boxcar made me feel more traditional, more a part of the honest forests of the Northwest.

The last one I bought was sold by a rugged-looking young man in a plaid flannel shirt who looked quite a bit like a tree himself.

When the tree came in and I got the twine cut, the poor thing had bald spots that required grafting extra branches bought at a tree lot in order to make it look less like something that would make Smokey the Bear cry out loud. And it was so dry there was no fragrance at all. That was when we decided to get the fake one, and we have never regretted it. It does, however, make one lax about getting it down. Of course, there’s also the front hall tree and the one in my bedroom.

But Monday it’s all coming down, and being put in labeled boxes. The optimum is to have the box with the wrappings placed near the edge of the attic openings so it can come down first. Doesn’t always work that way, though. It’s usually the last box down and, panic-stricken, I have gone and bought more paper, which is now as expensive as a present used to be, especially if you tie it up with ribbon and a big bow.

I do hope your team won the Super Bowl and that you had a lovely day. Now ahead into the New Year.