My father was not a sentimental man; to him, most holidays simply meant time off from work for a nap on the couch.
But one year he made an exception for Christmas. He decided that our Scotch pine should be flocked. And he decided to do it himself. This was a shock to my mother, who had to threaten him with a cast iron trivet just to get him to move the couch once a month so she could vacuum behind it.
What prompted this burst of holiday spirit on his part was a Sno-Flok kit that someone had left behind at Aarone’s Bar and Grill on East Hennepin, where he worked as a bartender. Fuddled patrons often left behind things like a bag of groceries or an overcoat, and my dad, as chief dispenser of suds, had first dibs. Freebies always inspired him with unusual energy.
The Sno-Flok kit, guaranteed by Good Housekeeping (which stifled any cavils from my mother), required the use of a vacuum cleaner and came with a dry powder packet to be mixed with water. Or so my dodgy memory recalls. This was back in the 1960’s.
Both my parents were heavy smokers -- my dad puffed away at Salems and mom was never without a lit Alpine between her fingers. Our house was so thick with second hand smoke that the winter light streaming through the windows showed ghostly ropes of it wafting about the living room. But they thought that flocking the tree inside the house might harm my lungs, so dad set the tree up against the garage in the backyard and commenced flocking. On his own initiative he had added several drops of red food coloring for a pretty pink effect. Unfortunately, the effect gave more of a Manson Family effect. And when dad was done, the gory silhouette left behind on the white garage wall gave rise to all sorts of ghoulish gossip in the neighborhood about ‘those strange Torkildson people.’
Sad to say, dad’s efforts at DIY holiday decoration was a complete flop. And I do mean ‘flop.’ He apparently paid no attention to the mixing directions for the powdered flocking, and the stuff remained so sodden on the branches of the tree that lumps of it flopped onto our wrapped presents underneath all through the night. By next morning the wretched stuff had seeped through the paper and loose cellophane to permanently mar the screen on my Etch A Sketch.
And that is why, all these years later, I keep a very green Christmas. I use a pine sapling, which I will plant this coming spring, and all my presents are wrapped in corn husks -- so they can be reused for tamales afterwards. There’ll be no flocking under my roof, unless someone spikes the eggnog.
