[lit-ideas] Re: Christmas Trees
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 20:02:21 -0800
Exceerpt from an Op-Ed piece in the Times tody.
Oy Tannenbaum
Katharine Weber
Now we are at the entrance to the lot. Here is our car. The tree man is
following us and he is still talking. Are we leaving without a tree? I
fight to hold back my tears. My father says something. My feet are
frozen from walking through slushy puddles in my leaky snow boots. The
sky is white with cold, and my teeth are chattering.
The tree man is trussing up our tree with twine, still shouting, almost
talking to himself. My father lets go my hand to get out his wallet from
his pants pocket, while shouting more angry, unfamiliar words, and now
he is shaking his finger at the tree man.
The tree man leans the bundled tree against our car and puts out his
hand, saying something in a more conciliatory tone, and my father
matches him, repeating his words, and suddenly counts out some money
into the gnarled hand, shaking his head in disgust. The tree man tsks to
himself and tucks the money away into a pocket, shaking his head in
matching sorrow over this unfortunate transaction.
My father tells me to get into the car, which I do, while the tree man
and my father together hoist our tree onto the roof of the car and tie
it down with twine that they run through the interior of the car several
times.
I feel very important, scrambling to take the ball of twine when it is
handed in the window to me on one side by my father and passing it
through to the other side into the hands of the tree man, who looks into
my eyes again for an instant and smiles briefly.
When they are done, my father says something to the tree man, who shrugs
and replies, "Zay gezunt," before he turns away to deal with another
customer.
Driving away, slowly, because of the tree, which is not very
aerodynamic, my father explains to me what a goniff is (the tree man),
and what hondling is (bargaining to get a fair price for our tree from
the goniff). Because we are in the neighborhood, we stop to get knishes
at the store where my father's cousin Morry used to work, where the
people behind the counter still know my father so they give us extras.
We eat the knishes on the way home. A hot knish - that is the taste of
Christmas.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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