This is the original version of today's Sunday strip. It ran in the Post Magazine two years ago. What I like is the tree vender, who's pretty much a funeral director, if not an outright mortician. Weirdly enough, yesterday's Lio plays around with a Frankenstein tree too, only differently http://www.gocomics.com/lio/2008/12/20/. I'd sure like to arrange a playdate with Mark Tatulli's kids.
Oddly enough, my Dad remembers his father doing this in the 1940s - buying a couple of scraggly trees and assembling them into one nice one.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a column by the great Mike Royko. He tells the story of a poor young couple who don't have money to afford a decent Christmas tree. The seller takes pity on them and lets them buy a couple of scraggly ones for next to nothing. He later sees a single beautiful tree in their window. The couple explain that they tied the two trees together.
ReplyDeleteRoyko concludes: "And thinking of those two orphan trees, which would have been tossed out if they hadn't come along, made me feel good too. So that's the secret. You take two trees that aren't perfect, that have flaws, that might even be homely, that maybe nobody else would want. But if you put them together just right, you can come up woth something really beautiful. Like two people, I guess."