Twenty years ago, while attending college, the most beautiful Christmas tree in the Midwest stood in our living room. It was an old Victorian home with eight bedrooms shared by several girls of our sorority. As the cool chicks that did not want the rules of campus living, we shared the rent on our classic party palace.

Each Sunday, ten young men from our favorite fraternity would come for dinner. In exchange, they mowed the yard, fixed what we had broken, or moved heavy furniture. It was a great trade off. One of the college boys was a local town baseball hero and his little brother often came along for the free food. Baby brother was still in high school and he thought he was a big dog hanging out with the college crowd.

The first Sunday in December the boys were all feed and waiting for their weekly job list. All we requested was that they find us a Christmas tree that would fill our living room with its twenty foot ceiling. The boys were thinking of all the places that they might locate such a tree, when baby brother knocked on the door. He was late for dinner and was beginning to get on some of the older boys nerves. So it was decided that if he wanted to continue to tag along, he would be in charge of finding the perfect Christmas tree.

He left in a pick up truck and $23.00 in his wallet. Remember we were in college and spent all of our money on clothes and parties. Thirty minutes later he returned asking for a saw. We had curling irons, high heel shoes, and make-up, but not a single girl had a saw. Three hours later a chain saw was located at a friend of a friend's house. It was now midnight when he departed on his Christmas tree adventure.

Baby brother returned thirty minutes later with the most beautiful tree I have ever seen. It took about as long to figure out how to get it in the house. Once in the house it was placed in the corner of the living room and consumed most of the floor space. It was a feet short of the ceiling and was the greenest spruce tree that we had ever seen. We were impressed by his work and promised to cook him anything he requested for dinner the following Sunday.

Monday was spent decorating the tree and a Christmas party was planned for the following weekend. On Tuesday morning we all awoke to find our Christmas tree the subject of the front page of the local paper. Seems someone had cut down a two thousand dollar spruce tree in the entrance to the local mall. Hmm!

The following year as graduating college

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