THOUSAND OAKS : Lot Operators Hang Hopes on Selling Trees

When Mark Strecker asked daughter Shelby to choose a Christmas tree, the 2-year-old threw open her arms as if to sweep in every noble fir in sight.

Sixteen-year-old Michael Winkler, a tree-lot employee armed with a long plastic pole to measure the trees, gave a wide smile.

Eager to tap such boundless dreams, half a dozen proprietors have staked out their piece of dirt or asphalt off Thousand Oaks thoroughfares to sell the perfect tree.

“It pays for a vacation every now and then,” said Camarillo resident Don Harmon, 43, a Los Angeles firefighter who has operated a tree lot under a landmark oak on a vacant parcel on Thousand Oaks Boulevard since 1986.

Harmon is the dean of tree-lot operators in Thousand Oaks and represents the second of three generations who have warmed their hands over trash-barrel fires.

Both of Harmon’s children, 14-year-old Corey and 10-year-old Travis, help out at the lot after school and on weekends, he said. As a boy in the early 1950s, Harmon assisted his own father, Hugh, who owned lots along Ventura Boulevard in the west San Fernando Valley before moving the seasonal business to Thousand Oaks.

To Christmas tree aficionados in the San Fernando and Conejo valleys, the Harmons’ lot is practically an institution.

Mary Courtney, by contrast, has opened a Christmas tree lot for the first time this year on Avenida de Los Arboles. “It’s different than an ordinary job. . . . It’s great to be outside, and it’s great to see people with their families,” said Courtney, 42, co-owner of a lot in the Albertson’s grocery store parking lot.

But selling trees can be a deceptively tough business.

“I’ve been involved with businesses for 20 years, and Christmas trees are really the hardest,” said Will Miller, an employee of Greg Cole’s Christmas Trees at Thousand Oaks and Westlake boulevards.

“You prepare for 11 months, and it comes down to rolling the dice for 18 days, so your homework better be right,” Miller said.

Harmon, who has seen the best of times and the worst of times, said the trick is anticipating how many trees--typically about 3,000--to purchase from his growers in Corvallis, Ore., and Shasta County.

Order too many, as Harmon did during the recession year of 1991, and you must pay to have the unsold trees chipped and hauled away after the holiday. At about 600 unsold trees in 1991, the disposal costs easily soaked up profits, he said.

Weather, too, can be difficult, particularly the drying winds that raked lots last year, he added.

“We turn on (the lot’s sprinklers) at night, trying to make the trees think they’re back in Oregon, where it’s raining,” Harmon said.