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One winter, just before Christmas, Larry got a job watching a Christmas tree.
No, I am not pulling your leg. Some nights Larry invited Steve to go watch the tree. So Steve jumped into Larry’s Peugeot and off they went to watch a tree. Now this had Steve kind of wondering what sort of a nut would pay someone five dollars per hour to watch a tree. Five dollars was one hell of a lot of money you understand. The job was for only a few hours. Larry would sit in his car, just up the driveway from the tree, and watch for cars along the main road that the tree stood next to.
The whole thing was about people stealing the light bulbs from the tree. Seems the man that owned the tree would decorate this beautiful tree every Christmas. He had spent lots of money having the tree groomed every year to be the perfect shape. It was tall. Seemed to Steve to almost touch the clouds. It sat right next to the road at the front of his driveway; which, by the way, went almost three miles up the hill to his house. Each year he would hire an electrical contractor to decorate the tree with lights. Well, Larry explained that it cost less to hire someone to keep an eye on the tree and stop people from stealing the bulbs than it did to pay the electrical contractor more money to come out and replace them.
So, that’s what they did. Just sat there in the car and watched for someone to stop and try to steal the lights. It didn’t happen while Steve was there. In fact, not much of anything happened. Larry and Steve just sat there talking, listening to the car radio.
One night that Steve happened to go along, Larry and Steve were sitting in the car and they heard some commotion in the brush behind the car. It seemed unusually dark that night, and it was a cold, clear, full moon illuminated night. So Larry had the car running and the heater going. So, for Steve and Larry to have heard anything meant that whatever it was, it was not to far away. Larry looked over at Steve and turned off the radio. Then he turned the key and shut off the car. They both got out of the car and started up the long driveway toward the noise to find out what was going on.
After a short walk, Steve noticed a light deep in the brush and dense trees. Then he heard a dog. No, it was two dogs, maybe more. There were voices. Men talking. This was getting exciting. Soon Steve and Larry met up with the men and four dogs as they came out of the dark trees and brush and stepped onto the paved moon lighted driveway. The men were carrying rifles and each had a large, bright flashlight.
Larry asked the men what they were doing on the property. One man answered “Training the dogs for Coon hunting.” Wow. Now this was something Steve had heard about. Even seen it in movies. These guys were actually out in the middle of the night, and it was a little chilly, pushing their way through dense brush looking for Raccoons. Their speech sounded kind of slurred, or maybe just some “letters that’s spelt difrant.” Steve asked one of the men what they were going to do with one if they found one. “Shoot the varmint” the man said. Steve wanted to know why. The man explained that he was from the south and he and his friends ate them. As Raccoon was not available at the grocery store, he had to go out and find them and kill them himself. The man told Steve a couple short stories about his childhood and how much he loved “Coon”. Another man explained how you had to take special care in how you cooked them because they had “a very bitter taste and don’t smell to awfully good ifn yous aint dun it right”. By the sound of it all, Steve figured “Coon” was something he could probably live his life without tasting.
Larry informed the men that they were on private property and should leave. One of the men said that it would be light soon and they had to hurry if they were going to get a Raccoon before the night was over. Then off they went, into the dense brush and trees. The dogs led the way. The sound of the dogs barking grew faint. Soon it was all quite again and Steve and Larry went back to sit in the car and spend the last couple of hours looking at the road ahead and listing to the car radio. Larry turned the car heater on.
There were other adventures that didn’t mean much at the time. Others that meant a lot at the time and then later forgotten. Then there are just circumstances that bring about nothing more than meaningless bragging rights of no importance except to the one doing the bragging.
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