A Forest of Christmas Trees

When I was a kid, my dad always made a really big deal out of getting the Christmas tree. Being from the Northwest and having hiked Mt. Rainier countless times and having worked in the woods, he really loved the smells of the forest. Kansas was hard on him. He really missed the evergreen smells that he had grown up and worked with all his life. So going to the Christmas tree lot was an experience of smelling that wonderful aroma. It was always something we all had to participate in, and we took our time choosing the perfect tree. He would often say he wished he could have a whole forest of Christmas trees.
Well, back in the day (I wonder if anyone reading this blog will identify with this) we had Christmas parties at school, and every classroom had a real decorated tree in it. We had drawn names and put presents for everyone in the class around the tree, and as I recall, the teacher always seemed to get something really special from the class as well. But after the party on the last day of school all the trees ended up on the curb waiting to be picked up by the trash truck.
The year I was 7, my brothers took our Ford station wagon to school to pick me up. They saw the trees on the curb and a light bulb went off. "Let's give Dad a forest of Christmas trees!" So we loaded up what seemed to me to be at least a couple of dozen trees and drove home. My mom was teaching piano lessons in the family room and didn't see us come in. We circled the living room with all the trees we had brought in and waited. When my mom came out, she started laughing, but we still had to wait for my dad to come home from work. He was shocked, but he got a good laugh out of it, too. For me, that was something so crazy, so weird, that I never forgot it. It's probably my best Christmas memory.