Sunday, November 29, 1998

Christmas tree with meaning arrives in town

By Sharon Randall

Christmas came early this year to America's Last Hometown. Tuesday afternoon, I pulled out of a parking lot with a trunk load of groceries and an attitude. Seemed every place in town had Christmas decorations -- disco lights and Santas dancing to electronic "Jingle Bell Rock." I wasn't ready for Thanksgiving, let alone, for Christmas. I love the season, but please, can't we take it one turkey at a time? Anyhow, there I was on the freeway, mumbling Bah Humbug and reaching for a bag of chips on the back seat.

That's when I saw the elephant. It whizzed right by me, wrapped in a tarp and tied on the back of a big, flatbed truck. I darn near ran clean off the road, flinging chips from front seat to back.

An elephant? Who'd believe me? I gunned the engine to get a closer look. And suddenly, as if by magic, the elephant turned into a Christmas tree.

What would you do if you saw such a sight and could swear that you were sober? Yep. I followed to see where it was going. Some things you just gotta know, even with ice cream melting in your trunk.

I was sure the truck was headed to a shopping center or a hotel.

Imagine my surprise when it stopped near my house.

Pacific Grove, Calif., is called America's Last Hometown not because it is, of course, but because that's how it feels. If you live in such a town, you know there are others, but yours is the only one that counts.

I've lived in this town 30 years and love almost everything about it.

Except the raccoons and people who feed them. But I never liked the town Christmas tree. Ugliest piece of greenery you ever saw, even before it got that disfiguring disease.

Planting the elephant

I knew the town was trying to raise money for a new tree. But I didn't know about Astrid and Billy Lang. I met them on the street when I got out of my car to watch a crane plant the elephant -- a graceful 32- foot cedar -- in its new home in a park by the library.

Moe Ammar, president of the local chamber of commerce, was dancing around the tree as excited as a Chihuahua on Christmas morning. The Langs, he said, had offered to pay the full cost ($16,500) as a memorial for their daughter, Michelle Lang Klotz, who was murdered in Pacific Grove just after Christmas, 1994, by a man she tried to befriend.

It didn't seem fair, Ammar said, to let the Langs pay the whole bill for the tree, so the town is selling bricks ($100 donation) to be engraved with names of donors or loved ones and used to build a commemorative wall. Folks are snapping them up faster than Rudolph can flash his nose.

What a bargain. The town gets a tree. The donors go down in history. And the Langs get a fitting memorial for their daughter and, we would hope, an end to their ordeal.

Nothing in life amazes me more than our capacity to take tragedy and work it for good.

That is the spirit of Christmas. It is with us all year 'round in hometowns, big and small. But we see it more clearly from Thanksgiving to New Year's, of course, because we cover it with bright lights and call it a Christmas tree.

Sharon Randall is a winner of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and the Best of the West commentary awards. Her column regularly runs on Sunday.

Scripps Howard News Service