A shiny thing 

The next shiny thing.

It came Christmas 1961.  In our living room in front of our Sixth Street Bay window.  It was silver and shiny.  My Okie mom wanted the latest thing.  An aluminum Christmas tree.  Yes, aluminum.  Light weight metal. Fashioned from bauxite and extreme heat.  It didn’t come from a picturesque pine scented green forest.  It most likely came from Kizer aluminum Out in Fontana 50-miles east of L A.  The same company that made rolls of aluminum foil and the smallish Henry J car.

However, the casual observer would say it had the classic tall triangle shape but that was the only semblance of a Christmas tree.  All the rest was it looked as if a roll of aluminum foil had exploded into shreds and wads of foil 

So, after many comments that Christmas, the metal tree never came back.  It stayed in the hall closet and finally taken to the dump.  Merry Christmas.