Digital Tradition Mirror

Evergreens Are Treated With a Coat of Noxious Spray

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Evergreens Are Treated With a Coat of Noxious Spray
(Dick Greenhaus)

We would set out each December on a cold and frosty road,
And return before the daybreak with a green and verdant load.
For along the Jersey Turnpike grew the perfect Christmas tree
Waiting there for us to take it --- so tall, so straight, so free.

cho: But we'll go out no more with an ax!
     It matters not if forest rangers are extremely lax,
     Still, a treeless living room will greet a cheerless Christmas day,
     For evergreens are treated with a coat of noxious spray.

The lights and globes and ornaments that graced a Christmas tree;
The presents strewn beneath it filled our children's hearts with glee.
But the rising price of evergreens has cast a gloomy pall
On the kind of Christmas spirit that imbues us, one and all.

No more will our Christmases be merry bright and gay,
No longer will we find our tree along the right-of-way,
For what we took each Christmas, as no more than was our due,
Is now claimed by selfish motorists, who won't give up their view.

(Note: Returning home from a FSGW getaway in October of 1986, I was struck
by the scansion of a recurring road sign: "Evergreens are treated with a
coat of noxious spray". The word insidiously fit themselves to the tune of
the Civil War chestnut "Faded Coat of Blue", and --- how could I keep from
singing? RG)
RG

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!