The Hunt Is On For The Perfect Christmas Tree

The potbellied bald guy in the maroon shirt was grimacing.

And the man with the flat-top haircut exuded skepticism as he fastened one hand on his chin.

These shoppers knew their Christmas trees. You could tell.

“Got lots of trees here and lots more in the back,” chirped a clerk wearing a hybrid ball cap/Santa hat.

But the two men paid little attention Sunday morning. It was obvious. This wasn’t their first time inside a Kmart.

The guy in the maroon shirt stroked a fire-retardant branch of a made-in-China “Oregon Pine,” one of 11 trees assembled and set up on an elevated display across from the pharmacy.

The other man made a decision. He stuck a parts-containing cardboard carton in his shopping cart and headed off in the direction of the cosmetics department.

A few minutes later, the clerk showed a woman with a pony tail how a certain model’s branches unfolded.

“Cool,” she said.

Another shopper examined a package of chemically treated mistletoe.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

A little farther up North Division, at Eagle Hardware & Garden, a couple not speaking English seemed to be discussing the merits of a tall fake fir. Maybe they were having the classic Real vs. Artificial debate. But probably not. I mean, what’s left to say?

Real trees smell good, dry out and then get dragged to the curb to be hauled off to a mass grave.

Fake trees, like other decorations, go back in the box till next year.

Members of the two factions seldom see eye to eye.

At Shopko, 17 trees were up and on display in a corner of the store just past the Ab Shapers.

A dad in a blue sweater asked his daughter - who looked like she was about 10 - for her opinion of a made-in-Mexico number called “Bennington Pine.”

I couldn’t hear her answer. But you could tell both of them took the selection process seriously.

A young boy in a Sonics shirt pushing a gray-haired woman in a wheelchair stopped by a display tree that was decorated to the hilt. “This kind of looks like our tree,” he said.

The woman nodded.

A few feet away, a little girl stared at a small, unadorned tree that should’ve been called the “Charlie Brown.”

The kid didn’t seem to know her line. So I had to say it for her.

“I never did think it was a bad little tree.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that looks at Inland Northwest gatherings.