A Christmas Memory

I believe the year was 1966. My mother was big on Christmas. She loved putting up decorations in the house and having a resplendent tree with all the trimmings. We never put anything on the outside of the house, but it wasn't because we didn't want to insult our liberal or muslim neighbors. We just didn't do it. In fact, we didn't have muslim neighbors back then and the liberals were few and far between where we lived. Still are.

So, mom is in the store one day and sees something new. It was a self tree flocking machine with the necessary flock. On a lark, she bought the contraption so we could have a Christmas tree with fake snow, or flock. Later in the week she bought a tree and set it up in the garage. Removing the flocker from the box, she read all the instructions and put together the connections and mixed the flock.

Not wanting to make a mistake, she aimed the machine at the garage wall and pulled the trigger. It was a good thing she did. Instead of the flock coming out of the flocker in a spray pattern, it shot a thick stream of goo right at the wall. The flocker sounded like a rapid fire machine gun when it went off, scaring her and causing my mom to jump with fright. Now the stream was flocking the garage wall pretty good with the goo as it trailed upward, hitting the ceiling, with the resultant splatter from the stream coating her hair. Mom turned off the flocking flocker and went to take a shower.

Once clean, and not to be outdone, she returned to the infernal flocking flocker machine and adjusted the output on the nozzle. Being a veteran of flocking flockers now, she held it in both hands and steadied herself, aiming at the tree. This time, she met the challenge with great success as the flocker flocked as it had been originally designed. But the flocking dust from the flock, being sprayed by the flocking flocker machine, began to choke mom to the point where she started coughing and couldn't stop. She accidentally dropped the flocking flocker but had inadvertently placed the trigger in the locking flocking mode. Back then, these types of things didn't have dead man switches. Mom ran out of the garage while the flocker began to spin, spraying its flocking flock all over the garage. When the machine was emptied of its flock, I was sent into the flocked up garage to pull the electrical cord from the socket.

The instructions on the flocker said to let the flock dry for a period of two hours. This she did. At that time, the flocking dust had settled and she went into the garage to retrieve the freshly flocked Christmas tree. I must say that it was beautiful. But...it didn't last. What mom hadn't counted on was the tree had to be transferred from the garage into the living room. This meant it had to go through a door, through the kitchen, through another door and down a small, narrow hallway. The transference of the tree's location was met with door facings, kitchen tables and chairs, hallway walls and living room furniture. By the time it was placed in its desired spot, it had been....shall we say....pretty much de-flocked. It looked like a tree with the mange. In its wake were many little dead flockers and no amount of vacuum power could suck all those little dead flockers up. Mom desperately tried to keep a brave face as she looked at the carnage. Deciding to wait for clean up, she went right into decoration mode. No matter how many decorations she placed on it, though, the tree only continued to look ragged and ill-kempt. The presents underneath helped a little, but we had great fun at her expense that year.

When the tree was finally taken down and put by the side of the street for the garbage men to take away, the flocking flocker machine was in a trash can beside it. I have never had a flocked tree again. Mom said if I wanted another one, she suggested I write Santa for it.