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Way back yonder in the Christmas trees
Since before Thanksgiving, truck loads of Christmas trees have been rolling out of Canada community on their way to the flatter regions to the south of us.
Seeing those baled evergreens piled high triggers a flood of memories for me because, way back before I embarked on a journalistic career, I spent several autumns in Tommy Beutell's Christmas tree fields, helping with the harvest.
In one sense at least the two careers are similar. Both have deadlines that have to be met, no matter what. Every week, no matter what, we somehow get a newspaper published. Likewise, every November, in good weather or bad, Fraser firs have to be cut, baled, loaded, hauled, sorted, counted and shipped south in time for city-dwellers to enjoy their mountain-grown trees throughout the holiday season.
Rain, snow, sleet or dark of night had no effect on tree-cutting. We worked every day until a certain number of trees were out and loaded. I spent a couple of Thanksgiving days way up on Tanassee Mountain, practically in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Parkway, dragging trees up to the baler.
It wasn't all bad, though. It gave me a few of those stories us old folks like to tell our kids – you know, the ones about how we had to walk miles uphill through the snow (both ways) just to get to school and how much harder we had to work back then.
And the scenery was spectacular. Most of Tommy's balsam (fir) fields are way high, offering dazzling vistas that unfolded as I trudged up and down the rows, dragging the trees behind me.
The people were unforgettable, too. Most of them were from Canada community; many still live there. Though lacking formal education, they all knew things a city girl like me had never even thought to think about.
Like where they were. The late Alvin Burrell showed me Sugar Creek Gap from every field we harvested.
It didn't help me much, though. About all I knew was how to get to the foreman's house where we met very early each morning. Then I'd ride in the back of someone's truck until we got to wherever we were going to cut trees that day.
Tommy's crew had names for all the fields. They talked about Tanassee Mountain, the "Shufe" Harris place, Dodgen Ridge and more, but I was mostly in the dark about where I happened to be at any given time.
As a rule they were tolerant of my mistakes and attributed my general ineptness to my sheltered upbringing. Only occasionally, when I presented them with an especially confounding example of the depths of my ignorance, did I hear, "Didn't they teach you anything down there at the college?"
By the time the next two harvests rolled around, I was something of a pro. I could tie knots in the baler string while wearing gloves. I lived on Jamie Clarke's place at Rock Bridge by then and had learned enough local geography that I occasionally could guess where I was.
And here I sit, a lot of years later, still with a job that has to get done, no matter how late it gets or how long some governmental body chooses to meet.
On rainy Tuesday nights, though I miss the people I knew and the places I saw then, I'm happy enough to have traded Christmas trees for commissioners' meetings. I may still have to work late, but I'm not loading Fraser firs while snowflakes fall.
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