'Once-live' tree warming up this Christmas season

The frigid winter blast that began Friday night has frozen pipes, stranded motorists, canceled schools and made life miserable.

Some estimates had the temperatures at 30 below, once the wind chill was factored in. The wind has been unrelenting.

Merwin's, right next door, has been clobbered. People were lined up at Les Schwab and Perfection an hour before the stores opened.

At one point, Pend Oreille Mechanical had a backlog of 30 businesses or homes that were without heat on Monday.

I went over to Merwin's yesterday morning and saw de-icer going out the door by the arm full. I was there to pick up a Christmas tree stand.

I had looked around Sandpoint and Ponderay Sunday for one but by the time I got to Merwin's, it was closed.

I'm sure the old, metal one with the three screws and the shallow water well that I inherited in the '80s was sold or pitched years ago.

I will find out tonight if this futuristic plastic stand really is a "two-minute" stand as advertised. Ray Yaw would not commit to coming to my house to help if the task took longer than the advertised time.

So much for standing beside what you sell.

Merwin's has also gained some notoriety Monday as the only place in the region with ice scrapers. Several people at the Bee had relatives call here to have them go next door to buy one or two.

It's been many years since we had a once-live tree in the Keyes household. We were in Bonners Ferry at our first house on El Paso.

It was just two of us back then and we knew that our Christmases from then on would feature at least one Keyesling who might be tempted to ingest a needle or branch or two from a tree.

That imagined incident would be a direct result of a recessive gene on their mother's side.

The house also had ceiling radiant heat, which meant all of the heat for the house came from metal coils in the ceiling.

It is a neat, inefficient concept that burns the top of your head while leaving your feet cold.

Well, the radiant heat did a number on our tree. Seemingly within hours, every ounce of moisture had been sucked from our tree as if it were a big green straw.

After three days, it was nude and a fire hazard and would have combusted with a mushroom cloud if anyone would have lit a cigarette or a car would have backfired in a four-block area.

 That was our last annual, once-live tree until now.

Wondering downtown a few weeks ago, Dan at Northwest Handmade told me he had picked up his tree at Wilson's Auto Center in Ponderay.

With that endorsement, we were at the car/tree lot on Sunday and found the perfect tree.

As I write this, our house is engulfed with a Christmas tree smell I had long forgotten since I was a kid.

Tonight we will put lights on, put up the turkeys made of traced hands on colored papers and hundreds of kid-produced arts and crafts for the tree we have gathered over the years.

We haven't gotten rid of the fake tree yet. I'm tempted. I am reminded from my tree-growing friends that the same plastic that is used to construct fake Christmas trees is used for toilet brushes.

So for this year anyway, the toilet brush tree will remain safely tucked away in a box.

Speaking of Christmas trees, lights and traditions … If you know of a house or business that has made a special effort to brighten up the holidays, let us know at the Bee.

We are putting together a driving tour of the county and want to include as many places as possible.

Contact the Bonner County  Daily Bee by dropping by a note, calling 263-9534 or checking out our Web site for a blog spot to include your nominee.

David Keyes is publisher of the Daily Bee.