This is a story about my father, the Christmas Ninja. Maybe there is a moral lesson to be learned from this story. Maybe not.
You will have to be the judge.
For some reason that could not be explained in hindsight, my father thought it would be a grand gesture to steal a Christmas tree. Not from a store or some commercial lot, for that would seem petty and venal in a low, common way.
No, he seemed more inclined to a grander gesture of protest against the commercialization of the holiday season. Something devilish. Something in a Guy Fawkes motif.
Then, there were several other factors at work. I do not recall if the Rock Island and Frisco Railroad had ever done anything to my father that would provoke retribution.
Though he generally had a jaundiced, disdainful view of large, greedy, commercial institutions, the aligned events might have been essentially random. He was living on the Southern Plains where there were few stands of anything that looked like a fir tree, except the ones planted along the right of way of the Rock Island.
Thus, the railroad and its assets became targets of opportunity.
The plot was afoot with its shape gradually forming. From wild, loony idea eventually to wild loony plan contained in an orderly, if not sane, system of execution.
He would wear all black. Naturally. Ninjas afoot do not like bright colors. So he’d go with the black ski mask, black sweater, black pants, black socks, black shoes. Black underwear, as far as I knew. He would drive a black pickup. He would be the Christmas Ninja. Striking a blow against The Man. Honoring the Little Lord Jesus in the most appropriate way possible—stealing a Christmas tree.
It was both noble and spiritual. And, besides, it sure beat spending 40 bucks for a Christmas tree at Kmart.
He would wait until several weeks before Christmas before launching his protest commando raid. All the while carrying his well-sharpened and trusty “Babe the Blue Ax,” he’d drive down the rural railroad frontage roads with his lights turned off. He would carefully assess the Rock Island trees and, when he found the exact right candidate, he would alight from the pickup truck, scamper up the gravel-filled gradient, whack down that tree in two or three powerful swings, haul the deceased conifer trunk-first back to the truck, toss the ax into the back bed and hightail it down the darkened road, all the while cackling in felonious glee.
This was the plan.
You would have had to know my father well to understand how this plan would have seemed perfectly natural and workable to him. First, he had always been a meticulous planner and at some point in his golden years—“Mine are brass.” he told me — Dad completely had lost his fear of bad outcomes.
He referred to his new-found freedom as “my give-a-shit threshold.”
In this new plateau of life, he liked to measure how much trouble would be levied upon him if something were to go askew. Like, getting caught. After all, how much effort do you spend on throwing a 65-year-old grandfather war hero in jail, no matter what he’s done?
As far as I know, my father never knowingly did anything wrong before the Night of The Christmas Ninja or thereafter. It was simply that he liked to calculate limits, risks and benefits. He measured what the boundaries of his imagination could afford.
On this blessed Christmas, he had decided that a free Christmas tree stolen from Profiteering Capitalists was worth the risk. And further, it would be fun.
When all of this was explained to me afterward, none of it, except for one fact, seemed surprising in the slightest.
The singular exception was how he convinced my normally responsible sister to join him. Now there were two Christmas Ninjas. My father’s lunacies could be contagious.
Though it’s been 30 years, it’s never totally come clear about her inspirational role in this family episode. Maybe she decided that Dad could hurt himself in the dark and that cutting down trees was at the far perimeter of his physical skills.
Plus, if Dad was going to get handcuffed by a deputy sheriff for destroying Rock Island property, she’d just as soon be in the county calaboose with him to offer moral support— and bail.
And to be fair to her temperament, the entire yuletide Black Ops would have seemed like a perfectly swell concept to her, too. She was the Ninja Apple that did not fall far from the Ninja Tree.
Thus the Christmas Ninjas headed out on their raid, bouncing along county roads on their path to criminal destiny and high hiliarity.
At this point, my sister informed Dad of several pertinent safety facts that he had failed to incorporate into his planning. It’s dark in rural Central Oklahoma at night. Really dark. There are snakes with big teeth. Walk carefully. And skunks. Don’t forget the skunks. And also, if we get caught, don’t run. Oklahoma deputies shoot first. It’s their way.
The proper howevers and whereases having been dispensed, they went speeding down the county road in the dark. When it’s midnight dark on the plains of Oklahoma, it’s in-the-bottom-of-the-coal-mine dark except for the glorious stars. If you had shined a flashlight into the truck’s cab, all you’d have seen were four luminous eye-whites staring back, big and round.
They drove stealthily without the illumination of headlights.
They ran off the road only twice, and never so far they wouldn’t get back to the proper path. Pavement is a civic amenity having come only recently to Oklahoma and not yet to its county roads.
But eventually they came to a stand of trees, outlined against the stars. This was to be the scene of the crime. And together, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto on a mission of justice, they climbed the little hill near the railroad tracks, spotted a likely tree, and began to whack.
And whack. And whack. And then whack some more.
A half hour later, they were drenched in their sweat-soaked Ninja garb. The tree had swooned against the barrage and then fell with a muffled plop.
Dad had assigned himself the role of lookout. So he stood in the dirt road and watched for approaching phantom vehicles, as she dragged the tree foot by foot down the incline. Every few seconds, he would claim to see a coming vehicle and signal for her to duck behind another bush. So down the hill she came, tip-toeing in tiny steps — and grunting loudly—from one hiding spot to another, like Bugs Bunny sneaking up on Elmer Fudd, except much louder.
She dragged the noble tree to the truck, and they heaved it over the side of the truck bed with a loud, joint ha-rumffff! Dad reached into his pocket and withdrew the coup de grace, a large red plastic “SOLD” sign which he wrapped around the end with a cellophane sleeve. He had expertly scissored the sign from a Grippos Potato Chip sack.
And then they headed off. The crime was done. The Ninjas had escaped.
It would have been unkind to be too critical of the tree they acquired that night. After all, the tree was a statement, a matter of protest. The two Ninjas spoke of the tree later in the barest of detail.
Later at home they piled layers of sparkly garland and dozens of glass ornaments, and twinkling lights both large and small and filled every crevasse and thinly foliated branch with decorations. It was a Tammy Fay Bakker tree makeover if ever there was one. (Note to newcomers: She was a televangelist’s wife and sidekick who always wore about three pounds of Max Factor makeup and fake eyelashes that were at least 6 inches long).
But the night had deceived them; It was not a fir tree at all they have pilfered. It was a cedar. And when they were done, and Mother got a chance to carefully assess the handiwork, all she could do was look woefully at the tall bush and shake her head in dismay. “That’s not a fir tree,” she declared with thin contempt. “It’s a cedar, for pity sake. It’s a tall bush!”
It was the most forlorn, ugly, bedraggled Charlie Brown Christmas tree she had ever seen. It was barely 5 feet tall. This was a Christmas bush that starving Ethiopians would have pitied.
“Where did you buy THAT thing?” Mother demanded to know with sudden curiosity. She mumbled something under breath that “you couldn’t have done worse if you’d just gone into the woods and chopped one down.”
The Two Christmas Ninjas said nothing. They would not allow their eyes to meet. There are times when the truth is simply not a useful choice. And besides, they were too busy scratching their arms. The cedar’s sticky, gooey residue had soaked into their forearms, like a fiberglass body lotion. I’m almost sure the two Christmas Ninjas had learned their lesson. Learned it once and for all. They surely would ponder long and hard about their many blessings, and vow never to do anything this stupid again.
They had finally learned The True Meaning of Christmas.
Or maybe not.
