By A Finn Moss | Beacon tree reporter

If he weren’t dead, Old Man Smunson would need a new sitting room.

Crews felling the Bass Lake Christmas tree miscalculated and dropped the 75-foot tall Eastern White Pine onto the Smunson house, which has been vacant lo these many years.

But the mishap did not prevent the tree from arriving at the town rhombus on schedule for the annual tree lighting ceremony.

Specialists from Blue Ox Tree Service, a Bunyan company, said an errant breeze caught the tree just as it was released from it’s earth connection.

‘We had it wedged but that potent gust nudged it to the left and, well, there you have it,” said Jack Lumbar, lead saw man for the crew. “It’s happened before. It’ll happen again.”

The tree smashed through the Smunson porch roof and came to rest on an antique davenport left behind when the family removed the old man from the home.

Onlookers wasted no time in yanking the tree loose, chaining it to Menno Yoder’s draft team and dragging it to town. Once in place, a crowd of holiday revelers decorated it with rusty charcoal grills, bags of narcotics and a garbage disposal from the Bass Lake Authority Police evidence room, as tradition mandates.

It was, as one cheery toddler put it, a Christmas miracle.