HO HO HO! Says who?

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LIFE AT THE CHRISTMAS TREE LOT
It can be described in one word, WORK… Our alarm goes off at 6 every morning, we are out the door before 8, I prepare the money and set up the cashier desk area, Mike walks the lot to see if any trees have taken a walk of their own during the dark hours then helps set up the tree processing area which includes getting the chain saws out and ready to go and making sure there is plenty of twine available for tying the trees onto all the beamers, hummers and jaguars that come into our lot. Lexus SUVs are very popular down here. Then we are open for business. We start getting customers by 9AM usually. Most people are always in a good mood when they are tree shopping. We have found the customers who bargain the most obnoxiously are the ones with the most expensive cars in the lot. They try to bargain a $120 tree to $80 then if they are successful they pull out a huge wad of cash and peel the bills off. Our day starts winding down around 9PM. I grab the money and head inside the trailer to start the bookkeeping and everyone else starts watering the trees and preparing to close at 10. I am usually up until past midnight working on the books. I sure am glad I took that accounting class in high school. It’s all coming back to me now. We just finished one of our big weekends and we took in almost 15,000 dollars in one day. I can’t believe I am handling that much money. I also have to do the payroll every week and pay the workers. Mike and I are both surviving on only about 6 hours of sleep a night if we are lucky. When we leave here my priorities are going to be day spa for a facial and good massage, then a chiropractor. Then a lot of veg time on the couch in front of the TV. The only TV we see now is about 30 minutes every morning checking out the local news and weather.

The lot we were assigned is the biggest lot the grower has, it is about 3 times the size of all the other lots in this area. Because it’s so big there are 2 manager couples assigned here. Our co-managers are Jeanne and Lou Fiske who have been selling trees for 9 years and working for the grower for 7 years. They are retired dairy farmers from Pennsylvania and in their late 60s. They are taking us under their wing and teaching us a lot.

As hard as we are working we are also enjoying this new experience. The variety of people we are meeting is surprising. The amount of people from New York and New Jersey is really scary. We are surrounded by New York and Jersey accents, we could almost be in an episode of the Sopranos. If you ask me I think there is a train in the basement of Grand Central Station labeled “South Florida Express”. Most of them are very tacky, very loud and if the wife is under 60 she usually has some very obvious plastic surgery. The men have lots of gold rings and necklaces and wallets with huge wads of cash in them. Then there are the younger people from Columbia who pay $400 for their tree pulling wads of cash out of their pockets. I swear I have seen people who must have $5000 on them when they drive onto our tree lot in their fancy cars. We are meeting quite a few people from Europe. We have been invited to a Christmas party by a guy from Poland and received an invitation to stay with a lady who has a house in Transylvania (Dracula’s castle) Romania. Lots of Europeans and South Americans here.

The scenery is also interesting. There is the skywriter who writes religious sayings in the sky such as Jesus Loves U and Turn to Him. There is the flock of bright green parrots who fly over our lot several times a day. The other managers remember when there was just a couple of them, well that has sure changed. There must be over 20 in the flock. They are parrots who either escaped for their owners or escaped for the airport when they were shipped in from South America. Our location is on an unofficial border. Linton blvd is a dividing line, on one side we have the really really rich folks and on the other side directly behind us is the area which is mostly Jamaicans and Haitians. When we first arrived we would hear what I thought could be gunfire at night. I chose to believe it was firecrackers going off. Turns out there is a firing range nearby. Thank goodness. We are in a large empty lot which is mostly sand and oak trees with lots of vines twining around everything. We don’t know if the tree lot will be here next year because the lot is up for sale for 25 million dollars. Any takers? Next door is a fire station which helps me feel very secure, but the downside of the fire station is all the sirens that go by several times a day.

Both Mike and I are both on the partially disabled list now. Apparently, some of the trees arrive with some extra greenery, poison ivy. Mike learned this the hard way. It started on his lower leg then spread to his other leg and went south down to his foot. He developed a really nasty case of the rash along with raised welts and huge blisters. It was so bad he went to the local urgent care clinic where the doc was very concerned. He is now on antibiotics and steroids with orders to keep it dry and clean. Okay, reality check. We are selling trees, on a sandy dirty lot with lots of rain. The guys have been wet and soaked thru for a couple of days now. Mike takes a break when he can and heads to the trailer where he takes off his shoes & socks, rolls his pant legs up and turns the fan on his welts to dry them. In regards to my foot, I returned to the VA hospital in West Palm Beach for check up. The doc was not happy with how little healing had taken place and ordered me be in the cast for an additional 6 weeks instead of the 4 weeks I had anticipated. I have not been doing a good job staying off it, plus I’ve taken a couple of stumbles trying to travel too fast on my crutches. On the bright side if I still have the crutches and cast when we do the amusement parks in Orlando I get a wheelchair and go to the head of the lines.

Dec 24, this is our last day on the lot. Most of the trees have been sold and we are starting to dismantle the 2 large tree shelters. They are basically just 2 very large tent like structures that shade the trees from the Florida sun. I am still disabled so there is only so much I can do to help. Mike is out there dragging poles, cables and whatever all over the place, I am situated in front of a big table with a big ball of twine and a 6 pound hammer. My job is to tie up anything that gets placed on my table. Like the miles of light cords and extension cords and tent cables. I have to make sure they are wound neatly and tie them in at least 3 places so they stay neat and untangled while in storage. Then there are the steel rods also called rebar. There is a mountain of them. We have used them (3 or 4 rods per tree) to hold them up straight when standing them for display. Well, when they come back out of the ground a lot of them are now bent, some worse than others. So another job the cripple has is to straighten them. That is where the 6 lb hammer comes into use. It is really a mini sledge hammer and I swear it weighs 16 lbs, not 6. I have to hammer the rebar until it is at least close to being straight. I feel like I have a new job at the village smithy. But I straightened them all out and even got a compliment from the crew picking up the gear.

Our last day was spent cleaning up and selling the trees we had left. Since all our structures were down we had piled all the trees off to the side. Anyone that wanted a tree could choose one for $20. Strictly cash and carry. No service at all, just choose, pay and carry away. We got a lot more people trying to bargain on the $20 day than we ever had when we had regular prices. Go figure. A lot of people wanted a tree for free since we were going to trash them anyway. And they weren’t very nice about it either. One woman gave me a sob story about how poor she was because of the holidays then paid me with a $100 bill. The guys that drove up in the hummers were the worst. Overall it was a pretty decent day. We stopped selling at dark because all our outside lights had been taken away. Both of us (us and our co manager couple, Jeanne & Lou) took off for some much needed time away from the lot. They went to church and dinner and Mike & I went to dinner and a movie. When we returned home we found someone had left us $10 on our doorstep for a tree. There are still some honest people out there.

The next morning we hitched up the trailer (well, Mike did most of the work and I stood propped up on my crutches watching him and offering suggestions) and headed north. We had located a nice RV park about an hour away which had cable TV, a pool and phone hook ups at each trailer site which to us meant 24 hour internet in the trailer, yahoooo! I needed some time off my feet so we are now in that great RV park in Port St.Lucie. I am doing some much missed internet surfing and watching a lot of cable TV. I think I’m in heaven. So ends another chapter in our quest to experience everything in life.

Next chapter….Disney world, Orlando and Cajun country. Till next time ……..stay tuned.

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Photos

Our partners
Both of them are in their 70s and worked us into the ground!