The Christmas season is over and those once beautiful decorated trees that occupied our living rooms only a week or so ago are now piled at the curb awaiting their demise.

Back in the late 1930s, Lansdale faced a similar problem with its community Christmas tree that for years graced the lawn of the Hotel Tremont on East Main Street.


As the photo indicates, the live tree had seen better days by the time this photograph was taken.

Although it was located right in the heart of town, near where the drive-in for the Rite-Aid Pharmacy now stands, the tree’s neighbor was a gas station, whose leaky underground tanks did a real number on its roots.

Year after year the gas spillage weakened the tree to the point where even Charlie Brown would hesitate to take it home.

Finally — mercifully — it was cut down and replaced by — of all things — a metal tree that looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

The bad news is the gas leakage couldn’t kill the metal tree.

The good news is that it, too, was eventually replaced by a cut tree, similar to the one that is erected each December at Railroad Plaza Park.

In the long run, good taste won out.