One Decapitated Christmas Tree In The Trunk
Brenda Lee was singing “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” on KRLA 1110 when the unexpected happened. My father and I had just spent close to an hour in the chilly night air out in east Uptown looking for a suitable Christmas tree. Then after successfully finding one and stuffing it inside the cramped trunk of the beige Impala, we complacently headed back home feeling greatly relieved that this onerous chore had been ostensibly accomplished. “Hope your mother likes it,” I recall my father saying as we passed the Swim Art Swim School. “Me too,” I said with a slight tone of worry, because to be honest, my very hard-to-please mother never seemed to like the trees my father picked out every year.
Either it was “too tall” or “too short” or “too dry” or “too thin.” We both knew and somewhat appreciated the fact that my mother wanted only the best for the family every Christmas season and if the new tree didn’t meet with her stringent approval, my father would hear about it for a solid week with a tidal wave of continuous nagging and bellyaching that prompted him to eventually stick out his tongue angrily as if gnawing on it violently. It was my father’s very controlled yet expressive way of manifesting his acute annoyance with my sometimes remonstrative mother. And then it wouldn’t be long before a minor argument would erupt with my ticked off but silent father walking out the front door to go smoke a Pall Mall cigarette in the backyard by the “seven bitches.” And that I hated.
As we rode down Uptown Boulevard that evening in December of 1965, I remember the heater was blowing warm air through the vents of the Impala onto my knees and face, and I recall feeling very restless and ill at ease. Afterall, eighth grade was pure torture for me and Christmas vacation, my two week escape from the tyrannical Sister Brigid Marie, was still a few agonizing days away. As the Impala crossed Greenleaf Avenue my father slowed down and came to a halt at a crosswalk. I remember watching an old man slowly walk across from the liquor store to the left, and as we waited for him to pass, something big and heavy and seemingly monstrous smashed the Impala from behind with a loud concussive crash; a crash so loud and hard that for a second there, I thought we had been hit by a truck. I remember hearing the screeching of brakes and the shattering of glass, and when this horrifyingly scary event was over, my father’s spectacles ended up on the dashboard, miraculously unscathed. “You alright, Mick?” my father asked, sounding very shaken. “Yeah . . . I’m okay. wh.. what happened?” “” We’ve jus’ been in a car accident, Mick. Let’s get out and have a look.” And so we did.
After gingerly exiting the Impala, we noticed a big white Cadillac with its hood smashed in right behind us, and two female figures sitting in absolute frozen shock in the front seats. The passenger appeared to be a teenage girl, about sixteen years old, and I could see a stream of red blood running down from her forehead. And her hysterical sobbing was so loud and so vehement, I truly thought she was going to die right there in the middle of the street inside that smashed up Cadillac. The driver, who appeared to be her mother, looked okay from where I was standing and I recall she tried to calm the crying girl down, but it was no use. The loud hysterical sobbing continued right up until the arrival of the ambulance, and as the attendants gently placed her on the gurney to take her to the hospital, she screamed curses at them and even tried to sock one of the men with her bloody fist. As for the beige Impala, well, it, too, was badly damaged, but as it turned out, it was not a total loss.
What worried us the most, however, was that darn Christmas tree, and what my mother would say. “Good God,” my father said as he approached the rear of our smashed-in car. “Look.” Never had I seen such a crestfallen, depressed look on my father’s face as that night when he dejectedly picked up the decapitated top of our new Christmas tree from the black asphalt of Uptown Boulevard. “I know what your mother’s gonna say,” my father mumbled while shaking his head skeptically. “Now Fred, she’ll say. We can’t have a tree like this. Go back and get another one. The very idea!” I loved it when my father imitated my mother like that, and I especially enjoyed it on that long ago night in 1965 because it instantly took away the tension and stress of the moment. Afterall, this was my first car accident and I needed to laugh.
With sirens blasting and red lights flashing, the police and fire departments showed up about ten minutes after the collision. And it wasn’t long after their arrival that a good-sized crowd of curious onlookers converged upon the scene; mainly kids on bikes wearing baseball caps, and a smattering of bored-looking adults with heavy coats on. I remember feeling extremely embarrassed by their endless stares and pointing, like they were all hypnotized by the accident scene, and I wished they would all go home, and they did finally disperse after two tow-trucks pulled up and took both cars away to Eckles Garage-Uptown’s preeminent body shop for wrecked automobiles. For awhile there, while my father was across the street phoning for a taxi, I was alone in the darkness and the cold, there on the corner of Comstock and Uptown Boulevard . . . not a solitary soul in sight. Just me and that decapitated Christmas tree. Finally my father returned and together we waited for the taxicab to come pick us up.
The taxicab finally arrived, and with a cheery nonchalance, the driver hopped out, opened his trunk with great zest and stuffed our broken tree inside. Then after talking to my father for about twenty seconds, he smoothly slid back inside behind the steering wheel and accelerated quickly up Pickering street to take us home. As we passed the Salvation Army Depot with its flags and green gardens, he got on the radio and announced to the dispatcher: “Ah . . . now heading to Hoover street . . . with two males and . . . one decapitated Christmas tree in the trunk.” And I could hear the dispatcher say: “What? Please repeat.”
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