by Dominick Basile

Created on: November 20, 2009

Betty Grable

( A Christmas Story )

There are times when the many elements of nature conspire to produce a natural wonder.

It was December of 1947. Simone, Sam to everyone but Esther Manti, was getting ready to receive his first load of Christmas trees. He had spent the previous day clearing his mason materials yard, of the trash and debris that accumulate when men who work out-of-doors don't have the time to clean up as they go from one ache-producing chore to another.

Trucks back in, sand by the yard is shoveled onto dump trucks. Bricks, ten-at-a-time, are stacked across the rear of the truckbed and stones, fifty and sixty pounds apiece, are thrown from the ground over the bricks into the cushioning sand and finally 94-pound sacks of cement and 74-pound sacks of mortar are piled along the top of the bricks to complete the load.

Men who do this stultifying work have little time to stop between loads to clean and tidy up after a bag of cement has broken or a pallet has been emptied or a brick or stone has fallen astray. Hot day after hot day these things are kicked aside, stacked out of the way in corners and the dust raised from early spring to late autumn falls indiscriminately on these piles and hides them. Until, in early winter the weather forces the masons to retire from the workplace.

Then, without customer interruption, the yardmen begin to reclaim the space they have sloughed off to convenience so that the green firs and pines brought down from Nova Scotia in big 14-wheel trailer-trucks will have room to be displayed.

And this is how Sam and his partner, their sons, drivers and yardmen make a living. Humping heavies all year long and then in the numbing cold days and nights before Christmas, gathered around a few fifty gallon drums orange with heat to warm their overworked hands and over muscled backs, display and sell these green symbols of a holy, happy holiday.

The trees are stacked on the trucks in bundles, the heavier bundles to the bottom. But,in truth,there seems to be little difference in the weight of the bundles to those unloading the trucks. It's the length of each bundle
that establishes the effort needed to move it.

A bundle of small trees is easily hoisted by one man and put upright against a fence ready to be opened and displayed. Big trees, in bundles of one or two are cumbersome and need two men to move them.

Once each tree is displayed, it awaits its customer. Everyone smiles and everyone is happy when the bargain is struck.

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