How to Get That *&%$ Tree Home in One Piece [VIDEO]

Before I tell you about this video, let me share a story about buying a real Christmas tree.

I was living in Austin, Texas at the time and it was a very cold winter there. Just a few days before Christmas, we loaded into the family van and went off in search of a Christmas tree lot. I lived way up in the hills, so we had to do some searching to find a tree lot, but after about a 30 minute search we came upon a lot that looked promising.

Well, as I mentioned, it was a cold winter and, at the time we were searching, it was roughly 12 degrees outside. I was in no mood to walk around a tree lot in 12 degree weather, so I pulled the van as close as I could to the trees, and looked around until the headlights hit up on a tree that, from about 50 years away, looked pretty choice. I walked over to the tree, lugged it back to the van and threw it in the back after paying the usual exorbitant price for a seven-foot Blue Spruce. The entire transaction took about 30 seconds and we were on our way home to decorate it.

Of course, when we got it home and in the house, it didn't look quite as good as it did from 50 yards away. There were tons of bare spots and the trunk had a nice little bend to it near the base. I broke out my trusty saw and tried to cut off the offending bend in the trunk which, of course, caused the limbs to be right next to the cut. So, I sawed off the lower limbs so there would be room for the tree to sit properly in the stand.

I went to neatly drop the tree into the stand only to find that the trunk was too big to fit into the hole at the top of the stand. I would have to trim some more trunk and limbs off. I grabbed my not-so-sharp saw and committed murder on the English language as I sawed off yet more of the tree. My daughter was quite young at the time and was quite the mimic. While I was using my dull saw to hack away at the tree, she was running around the house merrily repeating things she heard me say.

By the time I had the trunk down to a size that would fit in the stand, my seven-foot tree was now about 5 feet and the room was littered with limbs and sappy tree trunk, but by damn, it fit in the stand, but there was still a problem.

I dropped my tree into the stand and it fit, but there was now a bare spot between the stand and the tree. It looked like one of those pine trees that has it's limbs all up near the top. There was nothing to do but trim a bit more off the base so that there would be some lower limbs to decorate instead of a big bare spot. I kept alternating between trimming, putting the tree in the stand and swearing like a sailor and, by now, I was no longer sipping my Christmas drink. I was throwing them back. Straight.

Well, the bottom line is that, by the time the tree was trimmed down enough and looked full enough, what we were left with was basically a table top tree like you see in office cubicles. We went ahead and put all the decorations we had on the damn thing anyway and it now looked like a giant pile of Christmas ornaments.

I have to confess that it just might have been the ugliest Christmas tree I've ever seen. I guess the word "Mangy" would probably do here as an adjective. Between having about three times too many ornaments, there were the usual burned out bulbs mixed in. We made it do. I've had quite an affection for artificial trees ever since that year.

I'm lucky I had a van back then, because it takes all the hassle of getting the tree home. If you don't have a van or a truck, you might want to know a few hints about getting the tree home without damaging the car and the tree and losing your religion.

Here are some tips from a guy who sells trees: