Well, OK, more like a 350-horse chipped and lifted F-250 diesel, but the sentiment was still there.

Take an extremely eclectic bunch of people: part of Connie’s family, some enthusiastic twenty-something neighbors, a pre-teen and a post-teen couple of grinchy boys, and me, who can’t carry a tune if my life depended on it.

Wrap up a flatbed trailer in hay and Christmas lights, and take us all out a-singing with no alcohol and no rehearsal whatsoever.

We had a fabulous time.

We cruised around the neighborhood, singing some of the time and laughing the rest. I am not kidding about not being able to carry a tune, but I know the words to lots of the songs, and I sang until my voice was hoarse anyway, right next to Connie, who’s in the choir, and her sister, who has a really nice voice. We on the back end of the trailer were usually a half-beat behind the kids on the front end of the trailer. We’d sing the first verse or so of a song, then get confused about whether or not we were going to continue with the other verses. So someone would belt out the opening lines to “Jingle Bells” and we’d all gratefully chime in with that. We must have sang that one fifteen times.

By the end of the evening, our toes and ears were numb, the battery running the lights had died, and the fog was settling in, so Marv headed us back for home. I tell you what, it’s a whole hell of a lot colder on the back of the trailer at 25 miles an hour than it was at five!

Then it was back to their house for cookies and hot chocolate and to thaw out our butts against the fireplace.

And in just a couple of hours is our Christmas, with my folks coming down and going out to dinner at the place with the bucking bull and maybe taking a quick tour of the Air Museum done up in lights.

Merry Christmas!