Dec 23, 2020
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Frank Pichel’s Christmas trees will probably never be chosen to light up New York’s Rockefeller Center. They look more like the droopy, pitiful tree made famous in the 1965 children’s animated classic, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
But Pichel and his customers don’t seem to mind in a year when little seems normal. His trees have been flying off a tiny neighborhood lot since he started selling them last month to raise money for a private middle school that provides scholarships for students from an impoverished area of Richmond.
Customer Camm Tyler, a 36-year-old digital consultant, looked over his uneven tree as he propped it up against a fence and prepared to carry it home.