Linus van Pelt said it best: “I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”
It’s the famed line from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that looped over and over in my head before taking up my temporary day job at the nameless tree stand on the corner of River Road and East Main Street in Norwich. For approximately five weeks of the year, the normally vacant lot near the corner is transformed into a Christmas tree wonderland with pines shipped to Chenango County from as far south as Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Tree salesman Frank Lananna runs the stand. It’s a long day that calls for long hours, he said. He manages the stand on a daily basis after working his regular job on a dairy farm in Oxford and more often than not, Lananna keeps lights on as late as 8:30 p.m., well after the end of the regular work day.
I reported for work on a Friday afternoon, just as a customer drove off the lot with one hand on the wheel, the other frantically grasping the branches of a seven-foot pine tree strapped to the roof of his car. A cold December rain was averting customers, said Lananna, who just sold his fifth tree of the day. It was a relatively slow day in what would otherwise be one of the most taxing times of the season.
“When it’s raining, people just don’t have any desire to go out and pick out a Christmas tree,” Lananna told me, “but when it’s more seasonable, sometimes I get lines with as many as 15 people at time. When you’re just one person, it can get a little crazy.”
Yet Lananna keeps pace with the craziness. Nearly 100 of the original 250 trees on the lot have been sold thus far, he said. “Most years, I’m able to sell all the trees I have here ... Last year, we had that freak weather and trees were cut late,” he added, noting that last year’s uncommonly warm weather slowed sales and put him behind in business. “If you cut them when it’s too warm, the wood splits. They have to be cold to have a good cut.”
The first customer finally rolled in half an hour later, driving a pick-up truck to my relief (I’m not one who complains often, but having to tie a wet pine tree to the roof of a four-door compact might drag a few complaints out of me). They had a tree picked out within minutes – much quicker than I expected. My experience in tree sales showed me that people spend more time choosing from a fast food drive-thru menu than picking out the tree that’s going to stand in their living room for the next three weeks.
“There’s no such thing as the perfect tree,” Lananna said to me. “They all need a little trimming someplace.”
With me being unqualified in almost every way to operate, touch, or even look at a chain saw, Lananna took over, using his saw to trim ragged branches from the base of the tree and make a fresh cut on the stump. Then I not so gracefully carried the tree a few yards across the parking lot and heaved it into the bed of the truck. My coat still smells like a pine-scented air freshener.
To give the lot more “Christmas tree appeal,” Lananna moved a tree from the front stand to the space left empty by the customer’s pick, then marked the sale in his notebook. He keeps track of tree sales every year, partly to find which type of pine sold the quickest and partly to keep track of inventory. Though trees are largely untended after he closes shop for the night, Lananna said he’s had only one instance of a Mr. Grinch-like tree theft. “It wasn’t even a good tree,” he recalled. “It looked like it had been run over, so I tied it to the post out front for display ... They broke the ties and stole it from the post.”
Just as I was ready to call it quits for the day, two more customers pulled in, each with their own pick-up truck (call it beginner’s luck). Again, it didn’t take long before a tree was picked out and knowing the process, Lananna had the tree trimmed within moments and I helped load it onto the truck. Another tree, another dollar ... another five minutes spent rubbing pine pitch off my hands.
All in all, not a bad first day for a rookie tree vending technician (the unofficial title I gave myself). “Next weekend is going to be my busiest,” Lananna assured me. “More people come out the last two weeks before Christmas.”
And what are the chances that they’re all going to drive pick-ups?