Score one for the old Dude and his lovely daughter. This year, they found the perfect tree.

No, they didn’t bravely venture into the wilds of the forest behind the homestead, cut it down by hand and drag it out of the woods. No, they didn’t go to a big box store and pay top dollar for a tree that had been cut down last July and spent the summer in a cold storage warehouse.

No, no, no, they didn’t buy a fake tree already sprayed with fake snow, fake glitter and a fake color that would make Mother Nature blush.

This year, the father-daughter team found it when they drove the back roads admiring the beauty of non-coastal Maine on a pilgrimage to Morse Sauerkraut in Waldoboro. If you just arrived from away, or lack a sweet tooth, that store features a major league stash of European goodies and sweets. Yum.

On the way home, we stopped at our favorite farm stand, Beth’s Farm Market in Warren. And there it was, standing tall against a fence. The price was right, too.

If you talk with your big city pals this season, I am sure they will complain about the high price of Christmas trees. When I mentioned to my little brother (little – he is 70 or so) what we paid for the perfect tree, he sputtered and showed his jealousy with several words that I will not share with you out of respect for the season of sharing.

After we brought it home and stood it up in the garage to give it time to accommodate itself to the new venue, it was time to hunt for the stand. Somewhere in the garage, under the piles of things I mean to fix, or just items that are still useful but a bit obsolete, like me, is a dark object that is part of our family lore. It is a cast steel industrial sewer drain housing.

It weighs in at about 20 pounds. We always place it upside down inside a galvanized washtub. The end that connects to a pipe is just the right size to receive a tree. And, if the stem of the tree is smaller than the four-inch pipe end, the steel casing is stout enough to have withstood generations of shims used to center and level it.

Best of all, once the tree is centered and leveled, you can pour several gallons into the tub to provide moisture.

It is a win-win proposition. The tree loves to suck up moisture, and the needles stay attached until after the 12th Night.

My late father, who once worked at a factory that produced a variety of industrial drain products, brought it home after it failed to pass inspection for some reason. He told me it was on the scrap pile. The boss told him he could have it.

Dad found commercial tree stands to be flimsy at best. After several holidays, when fully decorated trees did swan dives into the middle of the living room, dad wanted something sturdy. And he found it.

Later, as my bride and I scraped together our last few dollars to get our first Christmas tree, we invested in a tough stand to avoid the dreaded fall down tree episode. We bought a cast cement stand that was heavy enough to keep the tree upright. When we brought our first Christmas tree to the sparsely furnished half-double home, my bride and my mother supervised as I inserted the tree into the cement stand.

It was equipped with a trio of wedges to keep the tree upright and level, and I grabbed a hammer to knock them into place.

My bride suggested it was leaning a bit to starboard, so I inserted a wedge in the opposite side and gave it a whack.

“That is almost right, dear. Maybe a tad more to port,” said the shipbuilder's daughter. Another wedge was inserted and knocked into place. “It's almost perfect, dear. It leans just a little bit to this side.”

In went the third wedge. I tapped it with the hammer, and she suggested it was almost there, so I gave it another whack and, well, you guessed it. The wedges split the cast concrete stand, the tree fell on me, I yelled a bad word I learned in the Marine Corps, and my bride burst into tears.

My mother quickly exited, stage right.

After we spent some quiet time alone, we figured a way to tie the tree up with some twine and decorate it. It was a perfect first Christmas.

A few days later, my mom, bless her memory, gave us Dad’s old rusty cast iron drain casing.

“Consider this a present from your father,” she said with a knowing smile.