ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 19, 1995 TAG: 9512190031
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
They show up every year around the end of November, like pine-scented gypsies in the night.
Colorless, barren lots on corners all over town suddenly become thick with evergreen forests under strings of generator-powered lights.
While the taste of Thanksgiving cranberries and dressing is still in most people's mouths, Christmas tree peddlers are hauling in truckloads of white pines, Fraser firs and blue spruces, stacked and bundled like huge umbrellas.
They are landscapers, tree farmers, even housewives. And once a year, for three weeks or so, they disrupt their other lives to eat fast food and stay, sometimes all night, in drafty little trailers. Just to earn a little cold cash.
And this year, when there was an early cold snap and 10 inches of unexpected snow, only the heartiest of souls were out there. It was cold cash, indeed.
``Aw, it ain't bad,'' says Kenneth Thompson of Pine Ridge Nursery and Landscaping. He and a partner, Shane Tanner, started out selling trees seasonally but now operate Pine Ridge year-round.
It's 28 degrees and falling, but he's insulated in a heavy jumpsuit. Even the wind from all the traffic on U.S. 220 near Wal-Mart doesn't seem bother him, though his face is red and chapped.
Tree transactions go pretty fast in this weather.
``It ain't no damn fun,'' says a shivering customer named Steve Raymond. He's looking for a white pine. ``Might as well go to Hill's and buy a fake one. What the hell.'' But two minutes later, Thompson is loading a tree into Raymond's trunk.
A woman in a festive green sweatsuit is hustling among the trees. Her children stay in the car, occasionally cracking the door and hollering instructions.
``Turn it around, Mom.''
``No, the one next to it.''
When business slows down, Thompson retreats to his trailer. It's a rickety affair, but right now it's scarf-loosening warm inside. The blue flame of two burners on the miniature gas stove keep the tiny place toasty.
Thompson's sap-covered fingers pick over a cold Long John Silver's fish platter. There's a TV on with a snowy re-run of ``Seinfeld'' rolling up and down the screen.
Thompson says some nights he stays all night in the trailer, but the night before, when the low hit 18 degrees, he headed home to Floyd.
It's a pretty miserable existence, but it must be worth it to Thompson.
He won't say how many trees he's moved so far this year, but if this freezing Monday night is any indication, business here on 220 is good. Within 20 minutes, Thompson and his mother, Hazel, sold a half-dozen trees.
And this is just one of four lots Thompson and his partner have around the Roanoke Valley. Another is on Main Street in Salem, just down from Kirk McGuire's tree stand.
``Oh, the twelve-dollar-guy,'' McGuire says of his competition. (Thompson and his partner are getting about $3 less on white pines than most dealers, including McGuire.) "He's stigmatizing the white pine."
That low price, McGuire argues, is giving the white pine an underserved reputation as a cheap, second-rate tree.
McGuire farms his own trees and runs Plant Systems, a small landscaping business. Not much landscaping goes on after November, so every December for seven years now, he's sold trees to get him through the winter, money-wise.
He's got a nice, warm house over the hill in the Wildwood Road area, but he spends most of these December days in his tiny trailer. It's a silver one so low to the ground he can't stand all the way up in it. The inside smells of a mix of pine and petroleum.
``It's pretty spartan,'' he says. ``I've got a gas generator, an alcohol-burning stove, and I pack it full of books.''
A nautical buff and a bit of a scholar, McGuire reads a lot about seamanship. And at 43, with a head and beard of salt and pepper hair, he looks the part of the weathered sailor.
But he's not sleeping on deck this year. When business slows down, usually about 9 p.m., he heads back over the hill to his house to sleep. Tree theft has never been a problem for him, and he figures sleeping in the trailer wouldn't do him any good even if someone did try to swipe a tree.
``Trees don't make a lot of noise,'' he observes. ``It's not like a herd of cattle.''
Besides, if somebody wants to celebrate Christmas bad enough to steal a tree, he says, they can have it.
There's a Floyd County housewife selling trees on Brandon Avenue below Towers Mall who might wish someone would steal a few of her trees just so she can be rid of them. It's the second year that she has bought a load of trees and come to Roanoke to sell them while her husband is out driving a truck around the country.
She wouldn't give her name, on the grounds that she didn't want to be famous, but a little publicity might help. She had sold only half her stock when a reporter visited and was beginning to regret leaving her mountain home to try to earn a few extra bucks.
On top of the lack of business, she was freezing despite her layered attire: two pairs of long underware, a pair of flannel pants, jeans, five shirts, a coat and a Santa hat pulled down over her ears.
She still had about 200 trees. She'd sold only 13 all day. Mostly she sat in the cab of her truck, reading books and listening to the constant buzz of the 4,400-watt gas generator that powers her lights.
In two years, she'd never had a tree stolen as far as she could tell. One disappeared when she left her post for a minute last year, but she found the money for it on the seat of her car.
And she found one gone two weeks ago, but the couple who took it returned two hours later to pay for it.
McGuire said he'll just be glad when the whole Christmas tree season is over.
``Two weeks of walking on pavement is about enough,'' he says, kicking the asphalt of the Salem parking lot where his stand is.
Soon, all the tree-filled lots around here will be vacant again, with little trace McGuire and his competition were ever there.
``I hope to be out of here by Friday,'' McGuire says, ``with nothing left but a few needles blowing around.''
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1- Kirk McGuire reads one of his nautical books as heby CNBwaits for customers. During colder weather he passes the time inside
the trailer on his lot on West Main Street in Salem. color ERIC
BRADY/STAFF
2- Kenneth Thompson wears layers of clothing to keep warm on his lot
on U.S. 220 south of the Wal-Mart store. He spends some nights in
his trailer, but when the temperatures dip too low he heads home to
Floyd County. color CINDY PINKSTON/STAFF<