K.C. Smith got an idea a few years ago as he drove past a little Douglas fir growing behind the guardrail in the parking lot on the southwest corner of North River Drive and Foster Dam Road.
“I thought I’d decorate it,” he said. “I was trying to do something for the kids.”
Smith, who asserted that he is not a “Christmas person” and says he can count all his relatives “one one hand,” put tinsel and some decorations on the tree.
He said he went to Dollar Tree and bought some decorations and put them on the tree. He’s done it every year since.
This year, though, as he decorated the tree, he got some attention.
– Facebook Photo
As he was decorating the tree on the afternoon of Dec. 19, he said, a car with a couple of young women in it drove up and stopped.
According to Katt Brunkal, who posted a photo on Facebook, they asked if they could help and Smith agreed. They also took photos when they were finished.
“He talked about how he is so disheartened by all the trash people leave around the lake and around Sweet Home, and he told us about how every time he goes on walks, he takes a trash bag with him to clean up as much as he can,” Brunkal wrote in her post.
Smith told The New Era the same thing, saying he was particularly disgusted by the trash left by loiterers in that particular parking lot. Once, he said, someone left a washing machine there. He said he wrote on the side of the dumped appliance, “Is this a city dump?”
On the night of Dec. 23, Smith said, someone had chopped the tree up with an axe or machete, he said. A Linn County Sheriff’s deputy investigated the situation on Dec. 26, as the tree was on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers property.
Smith was clearly disgusted, as he and a staffer from The New Era surveyed the damage the day after Christmas.
“I’m really p – – – – d,” he said. “I like kids. I thought the kids might enjoy it.”