The Story behind Charlie Brown's [ greg walter's] Christmas Tree lot

So here is the deal with me and my Christmas Trees. This story for me starts at birth, as I was born December 26^th 1961. Yea a Christmas baby! Baaaaa hum bug! Yea yea I know, Jesus complex and all that. But, it’s really more like a Scrooge complex. I’m sure you all know someone who has a birthday around Christmas. They all have the same complaint! It’s all about the Holiday and their birthday is all but forgot, and thus---bah humbug.

But really that’s not what this story is about. Not at all! This is a story about being careful of what you choose as your first successful childhood business. It is about a lifetime of entrepreneuring. It is about my relationship as a Colorado native with the mountains and the woods that I have always called my home even though at times it weren’t.

Sooo --- it begins:

             Like most kids of my generation we all got allowances, but, we earned it with chores and for me the allowance wasn’t much, so I did all kinds of things to supplement. Dumpster diving for aluminum to then take to the Coors recycling plant for money, shoveling the neighbor’s sidewalks after a snow, digging the sod out of backyards and turning the soil so they could have a garden. But alas the one that stuck, the one that is still with me today, the one that has haunted my entire life with a love of woods and sweat and labor. Fire-wooding. That was it. That was the one. Out in the woods just you and your all powerful saw, felling, limbing, skidding, excitement, adrenaline ------ Danger, And, in the end of all that, the fruits of your labor---- A stack of wood and money. Funny, What I got for a cord of wood then in the mid 70’s is about the same as people get now and for a 12 year old, that was great money. I would pursue that line of work mostly as my main source of income till I was 22.

Since then I have continually refined how to make money from the woods, and in each step of the way I hope that I have become more efficient. But, in any case the reality is that I am still just a kid [ soon to be 51] following the same path I started as a boy. The first evolution was Rustic Furniture. That same wood that used to be fire wood was now worth so much more as a piece of furniture. That profession got me through my 30’s. Oh yea. What happened in my 20’s? That’s an entirely different story, as I am sure it is for most. [Just ask any President] Anywho, skipping another decade brings me to the present. Here I am again, out in the woods, got the old 1980 f-350 runnin, but this time it’s Christmas trees. I love em. They smell great. The whole ordeal of decorating and rearranging is truly a creative process and in the end, even for a scrooge, it puts a smile on my face and that’s the best part of all.

G Vroom © 12/4/2012