The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

For the past eight winters, I've sold Christmas trees in the Twin Cities.  Shopping for a Christmas tree is universally regarded as a joyous yuletide experience.  But selling Christmas trees can be a brutal and sometimes sordid job.  Here is an inside look at life on the Christmas tree lot.

My first customer of the day is a pervish forty year old man in a puffy down jacket and nylon exercise pants.  He is looking for a thick 6' Fraser Fir.  As we chit chat about the finer points of needle retention on Christmas trees, the man grossly nurses a tall coffee.  He takes long exaggerated sips.  Although it is quite nauseating to witness a grown man hum with delight after each gaping mouthful of caramel latte, I nonetheless show him several tree options; some skinny, some wide, and everything in between.  One tree in particular is real dense around the trunk of the tree.

"This Fraser Fir is bottom heavy," I tell the man, pointing to a thicket of branches near the base of the tree.

"Hey man, some guys like big bottoms," he says creepily.  "I like my bottoms skinny.  Know what I mean?" 

"Ugh...kinda," I reply.   

"Do you have any Christmas trees with skinny bottoms and big tops?"  The perv asks me with a skeezy wink.  Yuck.

My next customers are a squabbling family.  Each member of the family wants a different tree.  Within minutes, I turn into a marriage councilor for the parents as they feud over what tree to purchase.  The bickering between the mom and dad has a rolling cadence to it.  

 "What kind of tree are you interested in?"  I ask them.

"Balsam," says the dad. 

"Fraser Fir," snaps the mom.

 "What size of tree?"

 "Nine footer.  Or bigger," says the dad. 

 "Six footer.  Or smaller," snaps the mom.

 After looking at twenty different trees, we get their choice down to two.  I stand before the family with a tree in each hand. 

 "I like the one on the right," the mom says.  "Which one do you like?"

 "I like the one on the right, too," the dad replies flatly.

 "You're just saying that because I said that," the mom retorts.

 "Honey," the dad says sternly.  "I'm not going to encourage you to shop more."

 The mom blows out an annoyed sigh.  She looks at me and asks, "What do you think?"

 "Oh, no," the dad says, stepping in.  "Do not bring this guy into it."

 "I think they are both perfect," I smugly reply.  They select the one in my  left hand.  The whole family is pissed. 

A few minutes later, a Jeep pulls into the parking lot and eight college age kids spill out like it is a clown car.  They buy a tree for their front porch.  As I tie the tree to the roof of their car, one of the party boys boasts, "We're going to decorate this thing so bad it's going to look like Christmas barfed all over our tree."

 Then I mistakenly walk past a silver Cadillac Escalade SUV that is parked in the front parking spot with the engine running.  The driver rolls down her window as I breeze past.

"Excuse me, sir," she says to stop me.  She leans forward from her front seat.  "Can you show me that tree right there?"  She waves a finger out her window towards a tall Balsam.

The woman is shopping for a Christmas tree from the front seat of her warm car. 

I schwoog a bunch of trees over to her car.  She shakes her head in disgust.  She turns down every one.  She is so picky it's as if she is picking out a new spouse.  She says, "That one is too bald at the top.  That one is too frumpy.  I don't like the way that one is looking at me.  Where did they grow that one?  Are your Christmas trees organic?"

After the sixth tree, she tells me that our Christmas trees are too expensive and leaves without buying a single one.

In her wake, this Super Douche walks up to me.  He reeks of money.  With his aviator glasses and barn jacket, he's in his "Hedgefund Manager" Saturday afternoon casual attire.   He's got five kids clopping behind him that are all clad in Edina Hockey jackets.  His waif-ish wife looks like she just walked out of a J Crew catalog.

"You know and I know that you aren't going to sell all of these trees," the Super Douche says to me straight away.  "So how about a deal?"  The man is standing in the parking lot and hasn't looked at a single tree yet.  But he already wants a deal.

"You'd have to talk to the owner if you want a discount," I respond politely.

"What?  You can't give me a deal?  What do...you... do... here?"  He says, eye fucking me as he stares maliciously at my soiled Carhart pants and duct tapped work gloves.  His societal slur hangs in the air above my head like a noose.  I am of no value to him.  "How bout this tree right here?  I'll give you $50 bucks for this tree right here."

"Ah, that's a 9' Fraser and its price at $109.99"

"Why you gotta do me like that bro?  $50 bucks.  Take it or leave it," the Super Douche says to me.  His waif wife stands at a distance and pretends she doesn't know him or her kids.  She hates all of them. 

I don't budge. Super Douche buys the 9'Fraser Fir for full price.  After I give his tree a fresh cut and tie it to the top of his Suburban-the one with the Norm Coleman and McCain stickers- he tells me to "Keep it real."

Later, a woman and her two kids walk up to me for help.  Before she can even open her mouth, the two young boys bolt away and start playfully slamming each other into the tall racks of Christmas trees.

"Boys!  Boys!  Come help me find a tree!"  The mom says sweetly.  But the boys pay their mom no mind and sprint away.  The mom is clearly exasperated by the holiday shopping season.  She looks at me with tears in her eyes.  "I've been shopping all day.  I went to Ikea.  What a flippin' disaster that was.  Then we went to Target, then Southdale, then Best Buy, then back to Target, and then to Pet Co because I lost my son's pet turtle and I had to replace it.  All turtles look alike.  Right?"

"Ugh, right," I say, not knowing quite what to say.    

Just then the two rambunctious boys wheel back around towards their mom.  She gets excited that they've come back to help her shop for their Christmas tree as a family.  The slivered moon hangs in the evening sky and the long strings of lights give the Christmas tree lot a magical look.   But just as the two boys get close, they peel off and sprint away again. 

"We're supposed to be having a Christmas Moment!"  The mom shrieks in frustration.  "We're supposed to be having a Christmas Moment!"

The Secrets of the City, the newly launched Rake website, is now one of the Twin Cities coolest publications.  It is a web site chock full of outstanding suggestions for great nights out on the town.  Whether it is theater, movies, restaurant, or a banging new downtown club, The Secrets of the City has got the Twin Cities covered.  The wildly popular “Secrets of the Day” section leads Twin City trendsetters from one awesome happening to the next.  Sadly, though, I do not participate in any of it.   I suck.  Royally.  As my fellow Twin Citiens celebrate our great city, I sit at home, sluggishly participating in a giant Suckfest.  Here is look at how un-awesome my weekend was:

Friday Night:

7:04 pm-My tiny South Minneapolis home was ransacked by small children.  My 4 year old son and his three cousins (ages 2, 5, and 9) devoured microwave popcorn and Halloween candy out of what appeared to be a homemade trough. 

7:09 pm- The Smith kids turned my house into “Mad Max: Welcome to the Thunderdome.”  They playfully dismantled my living room, annihilated the toy bins, and hid my Netflix movies in the back of the refrigerator.  All the cushions were thrown off the couch.   The youngest kid (shout out to Addie!) neatly lined up 47 Thomas trains across the floor.

7:10 pm- The trains are punted across the floor by the older kids.  A shit fit ensued.

7:30 pm-The Clone Wars cartoon (the new animated Star Wars) starts on the Cartoon Network. The kids sprinted into the living room to watch the show.  They dog piled onto the cushion less couch and griped that they were uncomfortable because there were no cushions. 

7: 31 pm-Kids are stupid. 

7:43 pm-I found myself engrossed in the Star Wars cartoon and had a grim realization:  it was Friday night and I was watching a Star Wars cartoon.

8:30 pm-The cousins’ bolted out the front door to go home and left my house decimated like the New Orleans Ninth Ward.

8:35 pm-I still hadn’t showered yet.  I spent the entire day outside working in the blistering cold and my thighs were chaffed from my cardboard stiff Carhart pants. 

8:41 pm-I took my after work shower to thaw out.   After the shower, I climbed into bed and it was the first time I had sat down since I had ate breakfast at 6 am.  I watched a TiVo’d episode of “Chelsea Lately” with my wife. 

8:46 pm- I was exhausted and could barely stay awake.  My sleepy head bobbed up and down like a chicken pecking corn.

8:58 pm-I was snoring.  My wife woke me up and wanted to talk.  I had one eye open and my brain sloshed around in a dreamy landscape.  Sarah looked at me and said (in all seriousness), “Let’s talk about religion.”  

Saturday:

6:18 am-My son woke up with pink eye.  His right eye was red and raw and oozing. 

8:27 pm-My wife woke up and she had pink eye, too.  I ate breakfast alone in the basement because my family was a bunch of lepers.

10 am- I drove the two pink eye infected lepers to the Minute Clinic at the Southdale Super Target. 

10:12 am-We waited to see the doctor. 

10:20 am- I counted 17 different kids throwing temper tantrums in the store.  One bratty kid was so pissed at his parents that he decided to try and take his shirt off to prove how pissed he was.  He got one arm out and yanked the shirt off over his head hockey fight style.  The exasperated mom pulled it down and said, “Oh, no.  Not! Again!” insinuating that this bratty kid throws lots of shirtless tantrums.

10:46 am-I went to the Target pharmacy to pick up the prescribed bottle of medicated eye drops.  The pharmacy employee asked me my last name and I said “Smith.”  Then she asked me, “How you spell that?”

11:00 am to 12:18 pm-Since we were already in Target, my wife decided that we might as well shop for a bunch of stuff that we don’t need.  Sarah shopped for groceries, new pants, shoes, Swiffers, and then checked a few baby registries.  After being in Super Target for over two hours, it started to feel like “The Shining.” 

2:16 pm-The eye drops worked almost instantly on my son; his right eye cleared up after two drops. 

3:29 pm-I decided to take my son down to the Linden Hills shopping district to Creative Kids Stuff so that he could show me what he wanted from Santa.

4:00 pm-Before we go in to the toy store, we popped in to the Great Harvest Bakery for a treat.  My son complained his tummy hurt and told me he needed to use the bathroom.  I got him to the door but it was too late. 

4:02 pm- Murphy filled his pants with diarrhea.

4:13 pm-I’m in the bathroom of the Garden Sampler, the quaint store my mom owns across the street from the Great Harvest bakery in Linden Hills.  My son has soiled his underwear so badly his jeans are wet and stained.  I cleaned him up the best I could, but was left with a pair of soiled undies that look like a used coffee filter. 

4:21 pm-Thinking it was seriously bad karma to leave poopy undies in the bathroom of my mom’s store on a Saturday, I manned up and rolled the dirty underwear in a paper towel and put them in my pocket.

4:23 pm-I couldn’t find a public trash can.  So I walked back to my car with my son’s shit splattered underwear in my pants pocket.

8 pm- I needed to get out of the house.  Between my son’s shit in my pocket, the pink eye, and the Target shopping lobotomy, I was desperate for some “dude time.”  My wife was engrossed in another fascinating episode of “Tim Gunn’s Style Show.”   I called my friends Gumbo and Chuck B for an emergency “bro date”.  We went out and drank rum and ate bacon cheeseburgers.

9:38 pm-My night ended in a Walgreens parking lot, where Chuck B and Gumbo purchased a pack of smokes. 

9:48 pm-As they huffed away, we all decided that the Walgreens at 50th and France is the saddest store in the Twin Cities.  But it is not sadder than the highlight of our Saturday night: loitering in a Walgreens parking lot.

Sunday:

11:14 am-In a desperate attempt to gain some resemblance of culture, I took my son to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. 

11:21am-In front of a giant portrait of George Washington, a snot nosed kid accosts a Doucette and asked her, “Where’s the Art?”

12:12 pm-We wandered the halls of the museum.  Murphy pointed out the fact that none of the human statues had noses.  He’s quite astute.

12:30 pm-Our wandering led us into the new museum exhibit titled “India: Public Places, Private Spaces.”

12:31 pm-We rounded a corner in the India exhibit and came face to face with a massive photograph of two naked men.  The two naked dudes were wrapped in some sort of sexual pretzel.  Their dongs were touching.  (Don’t get me wrong: The photo was very nice.  But not exactly kid material.  Murphy spends most his day looking at cartoon pictures of dinosaurs playing ice hockey).

12:32 pm- We entered another room of the India exhibit.  We stand in front of a giant projection movie of a naked Indian man showering.  At one point, the man in the home movie suds up his genitalia.

12:35 pm-I drove to the Southdale Cinema to take Murphy to see “Madagascar 2.”   

2:49 pm-To my relief, there are no naked men in the movie.

4:58 pm- We eat butter burgers at the Culver’s in Eden Prairie.  We are both wearing sweat pants.