Most people weren't willing to go too far from their SUVs or said driveway to cut their trees, perhaps 30 feet. That's a good distance for yuletide pioneering.

So when I spotted this nice group of trees 100 feet past the drive, I knew I had found the prime place for picking. Kind of like that best fishing hole or favorite ravine to sit and watch for that big buck.

"I found the perfect place to find our tree!" I said excitedly to Dolores when I got home.

Last Saturday we took our Christmas tree hauler, Ellie Echo, and headed out to the great Christmas tree forest.

I deliberately approached from the south so the tree farm would be across the road and allow me to point out the prime tree-hunting turf to Dolores from enough of a distance that she could appreciate it. Of course, the pickup tailgating us made that slow-down-to-look maneuver impossible, but I still pointed the spot out to her as we were shoved past so as not to have Ellie's trunk mashed by Tailgater Tom.

She said she saw the spot, although it may have been kind of a blurry view due to our enforced speed.

Proudly I swung into the drive, which where I aimed Ellie is parallel to the road. I could hardly wait to get my Paul Bunyan-era bowsaw from the trunk and tackle the perfect beast. I made a mistake.

I glanced to the left, and there not 20 feet from me was a perfect seven-footer, begging to be taken.

"Look!" I exclaimed. "There's one right there! A perfect one! I can almost cut it by reaching out the window!"

I parked and got out.

"There's a better one," said Dolores.

I hate it when she's right, which is usually. There it was, perhaps 25 feet from the car.

"Do you really think so?" I asked, unbelievingly.

"Yes (Dolores has only been in Maine about 30 years, nowhere near long enough for "Ayuh.)," she said. "Let's take this one."

I retrieved the bowsaw from the trunk, while Dolores walked the 50 or 60 feet to the wooden box, where you slide your $15 into the slot when you buy your tree. We've never met any owners or employees.

I headed for the tree, about seven feet tall, knelt down alongside it with my trusty rusty saw and started cutting. Before Dolores could return and before I could holler, "Timb....," the tree was down.

In another five minutes, the perfect tree was resting atop Ellie, strapped down with the two straps that fasten the canoe to the car in warmer seasons.

Feeling pretty good, Mr. and Mrs. Bunyon, started to climb into the car.

Then we heard it, "Vroom!" that loud sound only a chainsaw can make.

We hoped the chainsawyer didn't get hurt harvesting his perfect tree.

Years before in another life over in western Maine, I had used my chainsaw to cut the perfect tree. I had had a helper, who also had his chainsaw. You know, an extra saw is always good. What, for example, if the tree should charge. Two chainsaws might stop it in its rooted tracks.

My friend had picked the tree in advance. In those days, with four breadsnappers to feed and buy Christmas gifts for, we needed the perfect tree and one that was free as was this one. Only this perfect tree turned out to be the top seven or so feet of a 25-foot spruce. The trunk, where I began cutting with my chainsaw, was about nine inches in diameter -- the perfect Christmas tree trunk size to fit the chainsaw.

Paul Bunyon would have understood my satisfaction as that saw roared and bit into the trunk. It continued deeper, and still deeper, until, the tree began giving up and leaned a bit.

Right onto the chainsaw blade.

Which stopped and I quickly shut off.

My friend came around and looked. He looked with that experienced eye of a guy more used to working in the woods than a lowly news reporter.

"This is a problem," he said.

That I knew.

"But we can do it," he added.

That I didn't know.

He raised his chainsaw until it was a half-foot higher than my trapped one. He turned it on and began cutting.

In a minute or so, the tree came crashing down. Christmas trees that tall definitely crash down.

The now unladen six inches of trunk above my chainsaw, relaxed and straightened itself. I removed my chainsaw.

We cut the tree to the right length, naturally wasting most of it, and fastened it to the top of our station wagon -- before SUVs were invented and station wagons became extinct.

Home we went with our perfect Christmas tree.

I had just begun to write this column in those days, and I related our prowess in capturing just the right tree for that Christmas season.

I titled it, "Two idiots cutting down a Christmas tree."

There were others, whose Christmas-tree acumen I questioned, such as the eighth-graders who gave us a Christmas tree. I have never figured out whether, because these were eighth-graders, the joke was on them for not knowing or on me for being their teacher.

At any rate, they brought us a nice large spruce. It could have passed for the village green Christmas tree, but the town was so small it didn't have a village green. It did have a village, and I recall it having about six churches and seven or eight bars. Ah, the memories of Christmas in a small town.

As soon as we got the tree indoors and upright, we knew this wasn't part of America's traditional Christmas theme. The tree turned out to be a cat spruce, which is when I learned there were such evergreen critters. It smelled -- not a strong enough word -- like a cat had just _______ (won't write that word in a Christmas column).

We kept it and have never forgotten that Christmas.

Well, our tree from the Christmas tree farm is now upright, more or less. It didn't seem possible for a seven-foot tree that grew so straight and tall in the Christmas-tree-farm wilderness to fight standing straight in our living room so hard.

But we finally, after tying the upper part to the walls so the tree wouldn't tip over (we always do this) and tugging some at the tree stand, got it to stand fairly straight.

Kind of like me. As a child, my doctor always said I should stand straight. These days my massage therapist repeats that Christmas and rest-of-the-year message.

Dolores says she isn't quite sure which of us, tree or me, stands straighter.

Our partly-decorated somewhat straight Christmas-tree-farm Christmas tree. Milt Gross photo.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2011