Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, when you're broke and living in a cracker box, this is what you get.  It's now known as "Bob". Each year I bring "Bob" out of storage and set him up to the side. First, I'll tell you the stupid reason why he's known as "Bob". Hey BOBBY! The Bobinator. Bob-O-Links.

I came back to Cleveland and needed to get a gig so I could get an apartment. Silly thing to do, move home, live with family, and try to get a place to live. Um, you need a job first. Imagine that. Never mind that your credit is shot and you need a place to rebuild your life, no gig, no place to rebuild. Dillards was hiring, so I went in. I had retail sales chops, but never sold fashions. I would learn and adapt. My interview included "Sell me this pencil", which is a really old way to see if your potential employee has sales chops. Needless to say, I can BS with the best of them. "You know how many times you've had a pen run out of ink, and well, you're out of luck. But if you had a PENCIL.. you can stick it in your nose when you're bored in middle school!" Yeah, that kind of stupidity.  Trouble was, I learned real fast that our customers were very infrequent at this store. Therefore all hopes of meeting whatever goals for sales were set were impossible for all but the shoe sales guys and the fancy brand name department guys. Well, besides wearing a jacket and tie by Lord Dillard's law, we had to have a name tag. I had a temp tag but soon was issued a genuine name tag. They weren't pin on, they were magnetic, so they could be popped off easily. More often than not, I'd lose my tag. Enter BOB.

Bob was a name tag that was one of the extra ones. They could be found in drawers and behind registers for mooks like me to wear in case we forgot or lost ours. I became Bob and stayed that way as I couldn't find mine. I'm sure somewhere there's a sales rep walking around with  MUD on their tag. I thought it was a good place for the name tag on my long lost tree.

 

So, what about this tree? When I was following my career dreams, working in radio, I took the cheapest place I could live without a room mate. I had credit cards to make up the difference. What could possibly go wrong? I had a few decorations I'd collected but didn't have a tree to put them on. I couldn't afford, let alone fit anything in my cracker box. Solution? Dollar store! I went to a future "Big Chain" of dollar stores, and they had a battery operated set of lights and teensy Christmas trees. So for $2 and tax, I had a tree and lights and I put 5-8 festive decorations and wrapped the base with Linus's stinky spit covered blanket. Merry X-Mas indeed. I actually used this tree for several years, even after I came back to Cleveland. Apartments have limited space for trees. I think I replaced these lights with a string of electric when some of the lights blew out. Once I moved into a larger place, I got a bigger cheapass tree and this tree became "Bob" and I replaced the old string of lights. Essentially, it's for decorations that don't make the big tree. It's minor league.  Here are the decorations in the minors:

Rusty Tree (.176) He's with the Poughkeepsie Santacrafts. He's been rehabbing with a sprained fooba shingey bip bip.  He's actually a neat rusty metal tree, aged to be rusty with a painted Santa baby on the side. It's a nice decoration, but it's really big and takes up a lot of real estate on my main tree. I need the room for those beer cans. So, he's in the minor leagues.

Knitten K. Snauflak (.233) who is in the minor leagues with the Kokomo Shmooshots on a rehab assignment for a strained left flibbijam snozzgween. He's had a good career and even lived in the major leagues on the Cleveland Cheapass Trees for a year or too until injured and demoted, to make room for the Cleveland losing sports teams candy canes. This was made for a craft show. Nice because it's real art.

The little elf is Elmer Jingeling (.876) a heavy hitter with the Piscataway Donglewheats  as a lifetime minor league player who never made it to the majors, Lee.  While he is almost money when batting, he's often called out when running the bases when the bag O crap that he carries or the golden strings make him easy to be tagged out. He does lead the league in RBI's and is a dezzy hitter. Mom always gives us a little ornament every year. My brother doesn't put up a tree whereas I proudly put mine up. This one just slipped to the minor league and stayed a player there.

ARF! -Ric