THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Going out to buy the Christmas tree when I was a young boy was always a treat. We never put the Christmas tree up in our house until Christmas Eve. It was a tradition in our family to always decorate it on the day before Christmas.

However, before we ever got to that point we had to go get the Christmas tree and it was never bought at a store. We always went to a tree farm and spent a long time getting just the right tree. Do you have any idea how a family can disagree on choosing just the right tree? That stuck with me from when I was a little boy in the 1950s in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania until I had children of my own and was doing the same thing at a tree farm in the Pocono’s near the end of the century. The last time we bought a tree at a tree farm was in the year 2003, the Christmas before we moved permanently to North Carolina.

There had been many tree farms in the Pocono’s as long as I can remember. I was probably no more than five years old the first time I went. The price of a tree in 1953 was $2.00. Can you imagine that? As I remember the last Christmas tree we bought was $25.00, and that was a lot cheaper than at many places.

Today you see so many people buying their Christmas trees at home improvement stores and department stores. People say they don’t have the time to go out and cut down their own Christmas tree. But going out to a Christmas tree farm with the kids in tow, spending a long time picking out just the right tree, and cutting it down is one of the most joyous events I can remember about Christmas. Many people go for the artificial trees, which I admit, have some advantages. But even the smell of a real tree is a pleasure that can stay with you for years. Many artificial trees now appear to be very real, but if you were born in the country and raised there, they are no substitute for the real thing.

No, you can’t save it from one year to the next like an artificial one. Artificial trees always look the same from year to year. When you go out and get a real tree it seems like you always say, “I think it’s prettier than the one we had last year.” As though anyone is going to remember how every tree looked through the years of buying real ones.

One year I remember, we had a very deep snow storm right before Christmas and we couldn’t get out too choose a tree. Snow on Christmas Eve and Christmas day is always something that people from the country cherish forever. Since we couldn’t get a tree on this particular year, my brother Jim went into the forest near our house and cut down our Christmas tree. He came home with a white pine, which has very long needles. After it was decorated, it turned out to be one of the most beautiful trees we ever had. I think that is because we just couldn’t buy our tree. We were snow bound on Christmas but my brother got us a nice tree. Those occasional years that we were snowed in when I was growing up turned out to be some of the most memorable ones.

I’ll take searching for and cutting down that real tree at Christmas in a heartbeat before I’ll settle for, buying an artificial tree. Whether at Christmas or any time of the year, you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.

Copyright  Larry W. Fish  2014

FROM FIRST THOUGHT TO FINAL REALITY

It was at the beginning of 2012 that a thought for a novel came into my mind. I had just finished my first novel, Golden Haze, had it published and I thought it was time to expand my writing capabilities. I thought what is it like when a spouse dies? I have been married well over 40 years and I know if something happened to Lina I would be devastated.

That was my first thought of the novel. I was making it of a man from South Carolina and his wife would be killed in a car accident. He couldn't move on in his life and finally after three years he is visited by God. God knew that he had much life to live yet, so he sends Shane on a walking journey across America. Where was
he going? What would he find when he got there? How would his life change? Would he be safe on his journey? I had many things to consider as I wrote this novel.

In the summer of 2012 I became very ill and had to have an operation. It caused me to take about a three month absence from writing the novel. After feeling much better I got back to it. I wrote word after word,
paragraph after paragraph, and finally chapter after chapter. It was an image running through my brain. I could see what was happening as he walked on his journey. I could see what he found when he got to where he was going. I could see another tragedy in his life. It was running through my mind plain as day. It was unfolding into a story.

I wrote a couple of chapters that I didn't like so I deleted them and went on another idea of how I wanted the story of Shane Donaldson's life to continue. Finally the story of his life was finished in my mind. It was sent off to my proofreader who made corrections and changes to make my story better. That proof reader is my daughter. She is very good at what she does. I made all of those changes and, Walk to Love, was finally finished the way I wanted it to be.

I spent the next year contacting literary agents and kept getting some good feedback, but the rejections kept piling up. They got frustrating and heartbreaking. I didn't want to give up. The idea of traditional publishing was a dream. To much of a dream I guess so after a year and 83 rejections I came to reality and decided to self-publish again.

I did many searches on the Internet and checked out many self publishers. I didn't want to go with the one that I used for, Golden Haze, because I felt I was over charged. Finally I found a publisher that gave me a very good price. I went with e-booktime.com. It has been a couple of months dealing with them and as of last week, Walk to Love, is a reality. The cover was designed by my daughter. She is a graphic designer.

In a little less than three years it has taken me from my first thought to having the novel in print. It is a writer's dream to see their work in print. Nothing is like the thrill for a struggling writer than to hold a copy of the book in their hand. I haven't received that first copy yet because the novel was finalized only a few days ago.

Almost three years from start to finish. Many idea changes, many corrections, but the best things in life take time. I hope that everyone that reads, Walk to Love, enjoys it as much as I did writing it.


Copyright   Larry W. Fish   2014

CHRISTMAS PAST AND PRESENT

As I sit here at my computer I think of the differences of Christmas in the 1950s and 2014. They are as different as night and day. How can Christmas change so much in nearly 60 years? It brings sadness to me when I see that the true tradition of Christmas has left us forever.

It was in the 1950s as a young boy that I would sit at home and look through the Sears & Roebuck and Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogs. Those catalogs were a big part of our Christmas shopping in those days. It was so much fun to see what was in those catalogs and many of my Christmas presents in those
early years were purchased from those catalogs.

In those early years our main town to shop in was Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. We would go there and walk up and down main street. Two of the main stores were J.J. Newberry store. Stroudsburg was the birthplace of the nationwide chain of J.J. Newberry stores. The other store was Wycoff's Department store. Both were located a short distance apart on main street. At that time the Sears store was located in the basement of the Wycoff's Department store. It was a peaceful and easy paced time of shopping. It was enjoyable and we would have lunch either at the lunch counter in the J.J. Newberry store or the one in Woolworth's drug store.

Yes, I think back to those lunch counters where people would sit, have something to eat, and chat with people that they didn't know like they were best friends. I think now that not only Christmas has changed, but people have also. The fast food places drove those lunch counters out of business.

Now I am in 2014 and have been doing my Christmas shopping in an entirely different way than I did in the 1950s. There is no more Sears & Roebuck or Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogs. Now I have the Internet where I do about 90% of my Christmas shopping. It is easy, but there is not the same feeling as leafing through those catalogs. We no longer have the pleasure of shopping in a little town. Now we have large shopping malls, with hundreds of stores under one roof. Now we have, Black Friday, something that was not even thought of in the 1950s.

Now stores are packed on Black Friday to get those deals. There are fights in many stores, over a toy or an appliance. Is that the was, Jesus, would want it to be? I surely think not. In the 1950s nothing was put out in the stores until after the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a tradition that I loved and it made Christmas seem more like Christmas was special. Now I see Christmas things in stores even in early October. It is wrong and ruins the spirit of Christmas. Christmas is no longer the holiday it used to be. Now it is greed by the large corporations that think of nothing of their employees and the true meaning of a very important holiday.

Greed has destroyed the pleasure and the true meaning of Christmas past. I often think of those walks down main street in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania a few days before Christmas with a light snow falling. People were so easy going then and not in a hurry. What has happened to people anymore? They don't shop like they are enjoying themselves they rush like it is a matter of life and death to beat someone else to get a toy. I don't understand it, I just don't.

Greed has taken over Christmas, but it can't take away my memories of my childhood Christmas times.


Copyright   Larry W. Fish   2014