OK, I know this series is only two years old. Like me, you will remember it as if it first appeared yesterday. That’s how two years seem at our age. Still, I enjoyed telling this Christmas story, and I enjoyed it again when I reread it this morning. I reason that if I enjoy it, you might, too. I hope I’m right. Now, if you will excuse me, I have Christmassy things to attend.
The Aluminum Tree
By Jimmy Johnson
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120 responses to “The Aluminum Tree”
But the saving grace of the situation is… if we’re old enough that time passes that fast, we’re also old enough to forget what happened while it was! E.g., I don’t remember this strip at all, and I’ve been enjoying my daily doses of A&J for many years!
Be sure and follow the link (the date) under the cartoon for the entire series.
I did. The interesting thing was the reference to Arlo’s brother. I seem to remember him in a couple episodes. Did he have any place in the narrative?
i don’t remember him either
Love it! Thank you. Merry Christmas 🙂
And Merry Christmas to you, too, Llee.
Re 12-23-20 real-time cartoon: That’s odd. Crawfish étouffée always makes me smile.
OK, Arlo. You were a good son to Gene.
Love the retros Jimmy. Thank you. Our family had the artificial green tree before we got an aluminum. That artificial tree lasted from the early 1960’s until the 2010 tornado wrecked the garage at my family home. The aluminum tree, only a few years. Putting up that green tree was a family tradition with fond memories for me.
From 1982 until 2009 I was in the Christmas business in retail a few years but mainly in wholesale, selling and doing shows, setting up trees and examples to teach and motivate others. I sold artificial trees by the ocean containers loads. (Really) to Christmas retail stores
Those aluminum trees are Mid-Century Modern antiques now, very valuable and expensive to buy if you can find one.
I love this Christmas arc and the Ludwig talks plus that is great Sunday with possom.
Thank you for the lovely reference to seafood gumbo, shrimp creole, and especially crawfish étouffée in today’s cartoon. Has Ludwig been making fewer appearances lately? I miss him. I do remember one Christmas Eve episode when he spoke to Arlo. Loved that one.
Vermont Country Store has the color wheel, but the tree looks if-y.
The package from Gene might KILL me. I have a pretty severe allergy to shellfish. But the story of the strip is that it is family traditions. Today my wife will be making sugar cookies with her nearly 92 year old mother with cookie cutters that are as old or older than she is. My daughter went to Germany on assignment, but was allowed to come back to Orlando. She just passed her Covid test (I asked her if she studied) so she plans to make cookies at the same time as her Mom and Grandma.
I made lasagna with sauce from roasted romas, onion , garlic and basil. I made meatballs from sausage removed from their casings and then let them cook with the sauce after I blended the tomato mixture. Then I put the meatballs in the food processor and put it back in the sauce. I assembled the sauce, ricotta and noodles liberally adding mozzarella, parmesan and Romano cheese. The difference was the grinding up of the meatballs, which my wife’s father and grandmother had made for many many years. I finally matched their efforts. Holidays is about family and family is made special by food.
My family has always had artificial trees and I think they only look fake up closer than I care about. My mother has always preferred the silver tree she grew up with, which she still has and put up a couple of years ago. I prefer the green ones, but silver does look pretty classy.
Christmas trees (or Hanukah bushes) have never been our thing, but I understand the importance of tradition. I especially liked the Sunday strip, although my cat is more likely to either curl up against my legs or stretch out at the foot of the bed. He doesn’t need to sleep on top of me like that because the Magic Blankie (electric blanket) keeps him nice and warm and avoids the problem of what happens when I need to move or turn.
Well, not so good news on the car repair front. My shop got the catalytic converter and sensors to replace what was stolen. But they found out when they got it up on the rack, the lousy *** crook cut through a mounting bracket. Of course they don’t stock it and with tomorrow being Christmas Eve there is no way they can get one before Monday. So this will be two weekends in a row without my car.
Re the 12-23-20 retro cartoon: My first thought was that the black-trimmed gold shirt Little Arlo was wearing was a replica of Capt. James Tiberius Kirk’s uniform shirt some company might have been selling in the 1960s. (We know Little Arlo had a coonskin cap at one point.) Then I realized it looked more like a later version of the UFP uniform. Well, at least he wasn’t wearing Lt. Uhura’s uniform, although he probably really liked the way it looked on her. I know I did.
And speaking of legs, who’s watching “A Christmas Story” this year? (“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.”) I had someone me tell me today that’s the only thing she watches on TV all year.
Our aluminum tree (with color-wheel light) served honorably from 1962 until at least 1965. My parents moved a couple of times in that time-frame, and I’m not really sure where it ended up, although a vague recollection is that my sister may have had it for awhile.
Ghost, I can never figure out the timing. The strips with Arlo and Janis as counter-culture young people in the 60s has always made me see them as about my own age or maybe a year or two older at most. And I was already in college when Star Trek ran, not a kid. Plus in some strips Little Arlo has a coonskin cap like those that were popular for a while around 1959 when the Disney Davy Crockett series ran. That fits my age timeline as well. But NOW they do not seem to be 70, which they would be according to both those reference points. So . . . is a puzzlement (Yul Brynner’s King in “The King and I”).
So I followed the link and found this comment under the last of the series:
“JJ CREATOR about 2 years ago
Daddy had a gruff side. I learned later, as an adult, that most of my cousins were afraid of him! He was a real Christmas hound, though. It was he, not Momma, who brought in sacks of oranges and nuts and tangerines at Christmas. All day Christmas Eve, he’d make solitary forays into our little downtown for one more gift. He never thought there was enough.”
Made me tear up, ‘cos my Dad did the same thing – came home Christmas Eve with a sack of oranges, tangerines, nuts, chocolates and candy. As Bob Hope says, Thanks for the memories…
Merry Christmas to All.
Bill
Christmas was, without question, my Dad’s favorite holiday.
Dickens misses his sofa for napping. (We donated it to a needy family a couple of days ago to make more open floorspace for Jackie and her new conveyance next week.) When we got in from visiting her this evening, he obviously didn’t know where in the living room he could rest his weary little head. It turns out that a couple of my t-shirts from the laundry hamper folded and placed on the floor makes a worthy successor to the sofa, even if not as cushion-y a one. But a few minutes ago, he apparently had a bad dream, what I call a “puppy-mare”. He does that occasionally, and I have read that it’s best not to awaken him when he has one, and after about five little whimpers, he stopped. I wondered briefly what he was dreaming, but then I decided I really didn’t want to know what could give a sweet little puppy-dog a bad dream.
OK, this is semi-weird. I just clicked past the retro series about the aluminum tree and came to the November 23, 2018, cartoon, that features an opossum ambling across Arlo back yard. Tonight, exactly two years later, when Dickens and I returned from the hospital, and I pulled into the driveway, my headlights revealed a possum casually walking by the outside of the roll-up door to the shop.
Oh and Jackie’s seven cats that hang around the shop (because that’s where I feed them) were about as useful for pest control as Ludwig is in the cartoon. Of course, I can’t blame them too much…the darn thing appeared to be about the size of a small feral hog, most likely from eating half of the food I put out for the cats.
My family in NYCity always had a natural tree which was a major pain to decorate – though it looked good. Mom liked all blue lights with a white light star at the top and lots of tinsel (which was the time-consuming part) as well as round glass ornaments. Not much home made stuff – we two youngsters were still young. When I finally received my American Flyer trains around ’47 or ’48, setting that up under the tree (or, under the piano) was a highlight. Never did use that train except during Christmas season, and sold the set almost 35 years later.
‘Twas a busy time in the parsonage. Dad was minister and general factotum: he had to compose/type the bulletins’ stencils for the services, run them off on the manual mimeograph with slip-sheeting, haul & unwrap the flowers (LOTS at Christmas), place them into containers, lug them into the worship area and arrange them on the altar. We two kids helped with the mimeographing and flowers. Dad also ran a service on Christmas eve (late) and mom hosted both choirs on Christmas morning for coffee and cake while Dad ran yet another two services. One of them was in German, at least until 1950. The family opened gifts after doing the flowers on the Eve.
When my MBH married me in ’62 and we then lived in student housing, we had neither the funds nor the room for a tree of any kind. The MBH came up with the idea of fastening a cut-out star high on a wall and then attaching thin ribbons (as might be used in wrapping gifts) from the star downwards in a spreading pattern. It was a nice 2-d tree, and colorful. I think some paper cut out ornaments were there, too. Very cheap and very space-saving!
Merry Chritmas Jimmy!
“And God bless, every one!”
Where’s that correction button? Too early in the morning, even with coffee.
“God bless us, every one!”, as Tiny Tim said.
My favorite tree was one of my first, a little cut tree about 4 feet tall that I picked out the first year we decided not to drive home to Arizona from our graduate school in eastern Kansas. But late on December 23 we got so homesick we decided to just take off for home after all. We had an old camper shell (kind of gutted but suitable for grad student grunge) and my now ex slid that in the back of the pickup and we tossed in our clothes stashed into trash bags. But I said, “I am not leaving my tree!” There was a little closet thing just inside the camper door, so I stuffed the decorated tree into that so it wouldn’t roll around and off we went. The whole way, my husband was telling me, “You’ll never get that thing across the border.” AZ has border inspection stations to protect the citrus crops (or at least they did; don’t know now), and they regularly confiscated pretty much any plant material. Well we got to the border and they guy asked us to open the camper. My husband looked at me pointedly that I had to do it. So I hopped out and opened the camper door. This huge wave of Christmas tree scent rolled out like you would not believe! The officer looked at me and got this funny tight grin on his face and asked his usual question: “Do you have any citrus fruit to declare?” I answered honestly, “No sir.” “Any other fruits?” “No sir.” Then his smile got bigger and he said kind of slyly, “Any pecan trees in there?” I kind of gulped because this was NOT something the usually asked. But I said (truthfully) “No sir.” “Apple trees?” “No sir.” “Oak trees?” “No sir.” He asked me about maybe 10 different trees, but never pine or Christmas tree! LOL At this point he was laughing and looked really genuinely happy. So he shut the camper door and kind of saluted me and said, “Merry Christmas and enjoy visiting your family!” I was 23 years old. Seems like forever ago. But a cherished memory of Christmas and of Christmas trees. When we got home, I set it up in the camper aisle and we slept in the bed in there in my parents’ driveway. We got home late on Christmas Eve and surprised them. It was awesome.
A great story, Dawn! And it was only California with agricultural inspection stations when I was trucking. My only story from that era was my handing the Coors paperwork to the guy in the booth and proclaiming, “Beer for California!” He smiled and said, “Keep it coming!”
Last time Marcia and I went back to LA for a convention, we had to stop just inside California for an inspection, but not in either New Mexico or Arizona. And, Colorado doesn’t do it either. Just California, as far as I’m aware.
Well I guess it’s official then: urban sprawl has finally crowded out the citrus groves in Arizona, so the border inspections are no more. On the plus side, you won’t get your picnic lunch confiscated now. 🙂
Nice story, Dawn. Where did you do your graduate work in eastern Kansas? What field? I was at U. Kansas 1961-7 in Lawrence.
Goodness! Yes, I was at KU as well, ’73-’77. Finished my BS in geology there in ’74, then did Systematics and Ecology for an MA. Spent most of my time in the Natural History museum as I was in vertebrate paleontology and worked in public ed and curation in the museum to earn my bread. What field were you in?
Officially, I was in chemistry (Malott Hall except for other courses elsewhere) seeking a Ph.D. The museum you mention was interesting. If memory serves, it was on Mt. Oread just off the top of W. 14th Street. For my first year in Lawrence, I roomed at 414 W. 14th and saw the building any number of times. After marrying, we lived in Stouffer Place, building 3, apartment 12. Those buildings were razed a few years back, and I am glad I saved a computer site showing them – maybe Google maps?
Besides chemistry, there were necessary ancillary courses in, say, French and German. I added about half a dozen graduate level math courses, since my first love was math rather than chemistry. Those other courses were not taught in Malott, of course. My doctoral director was Jack Landgrebe who was only 3 years older than I!! We still trade Christmas cards. Finally completed doctorate in August 1967 and moved to VA.
The kindness of Mr. Ryan, a vice president at Lawrence National Bank, in lending us (unsecured) funds to make the move (and occasionally, just to tide us over until a new paycheck) will never be forgotten; really nice guy. Otherwise, my MBH was getting her own PHT = “putting hubby through” degree!
Oh gosh. Our first year there, we also lived in Stouffer Place! — but I’ll be darned if I can remember the building or apartment number. Your memory beats mine all hollow! The Museum was (and still is) Dyche Hall, on Mt. Oread and (I think you are exactly right) at the top of 14th — right next to the Memorial Student Union (which might not have been there yet when you were; I’m not sure when it was built). It’s certainly a small world. 🙂
Dawn. You reminded me of our first Christmas tree, a scrawny, pitiful thing in a trailer we lived in outside the military post where I was assigned. We had just got married in November (we had no business getting married at 19 and 20 years old) and it was all we could afford on PFC pay. We bought an angel for a tree topper and promised each other it would always top our Christmas trees. Our marriage only lasted 58 years and I’m keeping the promise. The angel is on top of the small tree in the family room.
Oh gosh, Bob! That brought a lump to my throat. Merry Christmas!
You are ALL bringing lumps and tesrs. I am still in the hospital, my tree is 2 feet tall artificial mailed by my daughter. Smallest I have ever had.
In 1940s and 50s on the farm in Louisiana Delta a tree was cut in woods and dragged to house. Pines did not grow there so cedars substituted. Cedars were thought to be death trees because they often grew in cemeteries.
I remember live tree stands opening in our small towns and Mamma shopping at night. We never had artificial trees until sometime in 1970s after I married.
Myself, I love real.trees, elaborately decorated and overdone. If not real, super real looking.
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I think my family had the same tree n the 60s. Along with my Lionel train it was Christmas as a kid. Thanks for pulling the memory out of me.
Christmas Fun at the Nursing Home!
https://www.ksl.com/article/50073122/have-you-seen-this-nursing-home-residents-shooting-staff-with-nerf-guns-is-the-christmas-miracle-you-need
Oh Ron, this is priceless! Thank you for sharing it. 🙂
Today was hunter-gatherer day, in the course of which I discovered what one gives a woman who has everything…a portable wheelchair ramp.
A very, very old joke…
Q. What do you give the man who has everything?
A: Penicillin.