ingrid

I know, I know… how can a tree be a man?  Trees are not feminine or masculine (so there French, Italian and Spanish!), they just ARE.  And yet, this year just before Christmas, Francis, Inez and I discovered this kind of cool place and saw our very first man-tree.

The special place was Portland’s Queen Anne Victorian Mansion.  It was all lit up for Christmas, and for a measly $3 we could stroll through it and check out all sorts of lights and trees and such.  I wasn’t interested much in lights and trees, but I was interested in the first house in Portland to have running water and electric lights.  In 1884, David Cole thought it might make a nice wedding present for his new bride, Amanda Boone, Daniel Boone’s granddaughter (hey Brad, how come I never got a house with running water and electric lights for my wedding?—Oh wait, I did.  Thanks honey!).  The house is full of Povey stained glass and has most all woodwork still intact.  David Cole was a millwright, so all the treadles and do-dads and wooden stuff that I forgot the names of, was all made in his mills.  Most interesting of all, the house was on the Columbia river before the river was dammed above Portland and MOVED for God’s sake.  That is ridiculous how a house could be on a hill above a river in 1884 and just 126 years later sits on a neglected hillside overlooking a railroad track, ugly Columbia Boulevard, and an abandoned sugar mill.  Where is the river?  Oh, a mile or so away….

Anyway, Man-tree.  Man-tree.

So, there were 10 trees in the house which means that there was a Christmas tree in almost every room (some had two!).  In the mass of trees we saw one upside down tree and many, many themed trees.  In David Cole’s study, we saw the head of a boar, the head of an elk, a stuffed pheasant, and this:

Isn’t that a man-tree?  It screams out, “I’m gonna’ grab this bird and kill it with my bare hands, ripping its feathers from its body to adorn a Christmas tree in my manly study!”

And so, the Man-Tree is also THE BEST, but in a different way, I do admit.

In: Awesome! | | #