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WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20. 1989, PAGE 5 Christmas trees, you mîust realize, are like movie videos. The world is full of them, but only a -few will you remember. Think of the odds: of ail the trees in the world, the best you can expect is a personal relationship with three score and ten. Seventy two. Six dozen. &tvery many. And of those six dozen, only a very few -- haif a dozen at'best, wilI be remembered. Not the whole tree even then: glimpses,' snatches of memories, words spoke, people now with us no more. Six out of six- dozen. Which means if you're twelve, you niight remember one tree; at twenty-four, two; and so on. Memory #1: the annual Christmas tree in the village church of my childhood. It stood as a mountain, touching the ceiling I amn sure, the tallest Christmas tree in the world. Every year there it stood, sentinel to our Christmas concerts, the sanie tree, always. Memory #2: the pine tree I brought home the year I was ten, with help from my brother, then six. The older boys at, school were allowed to roam the countryside to find a tree; we could, too. I told my parents. Don't ask how I wangled permission, or whether in those days everyone poached a tree, but off weset with a hand saw and pluck. Miles we walked, until,' light failing, snow threatening, we camne to the first tree we had bypassed. Saw, saw, saw. I can see the tree now in the woods, majestic, proud. I can recal sawing. But I cannot for the life of me remember hauling it home, or see it in the living room adorned. Jim: did I imagine this? Memory #3: the scrawny spruce adrip with tinsel wlîich lurks behind mv grandfather in a photo at my WITH OUR FEET UP by Bill Swan Christmas trees right elbow as 1 write. The picture was taken in the late flfties; I was in my late teens. My grandfather is playing the old time flddle - as he learned it. in old times, not through re-broadcasts of Nashville nonsense. The old man boasts a head as white as snow, -and the top of the fiddle as white with rosin. Christmas will always be toe-tapping fiddle music. Memory #4: the first Christmas after I got married another lifetime ago, when my step-children Susan and Gordon helped carry the tree a mile home from the farmer's market. Always with me will be the walk home in the early Dec ember dark in the lightest of snows with two children tugging at the branches. Memory #5: the Christmas after my first marriage failed when I helped assemble. a borrowed artificial tree. It were a lonely looking tree, mishappen, awkward, a Charlie Brown kind of tree for an awkward and Charlie Brown kcind of Christmas. OnIy in June did I discover in my car trunk the missing branches which would have rounded out the poor old tree right properly. Memory #6: Each year, two Sundays before Christmas, we invite family and friends te help our annual pilgrimage te muirder a tree. I recali standing in a lot- somewhere north of Toronto, in a snoWless field under a biting cruel wind, trying to urge concensus out of a dozen people. Other years, other fields, and always the choice comes only when cold has bitten through all arguments. Memory #7: this year, the second year for the two gallon tree stand, dutifuffly filled night and morning. "Imagine," I remark, "Twenty-four cups two, three times a day. If that's how much a tree drinks, then no wonder our other trees shed so easily. t Famous remarks, which came on day five, just before the discovery that the infarnous tree stand leaks. Into the carpet. Under the carpet. Into the hallway. Soakxng the underpadding four feet in every direction. It'saa discovery that could only be made in the stockçing feet. I could go on. I haven't even mentioned the several trees which fell over, or those which dried out, or the one which ended up being the foundation of a snow fort. But of meniories you have your own. Bring theni out, polish them a bit, enjoy. To you and yours, the corniest of Merry Christmnases. They're the best ind. New health tax could mean lost revenue for hospita Whitby Genoral Hospital offi- cials say that whilo the now employer health tax may benefit mayctizon the new levy could hit theo Iipital7s pocket- The employer health levy, which cornes into effect Jan. 1 1990, replaces Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan (0H11>) pro- miums. And although the levy is to be 'ad b omployees, the Ontario oloita' Asocaton(OHA) asti- mates it will cost *60-million te implement the program in Ontario'. 223 hospitals. Executivo director of Whitby Gonoral Hospital, Jim Miller, pays the coat of premiums for hospital employees could more than double. "ur)~» current coat for OHIIP 18 $48 000. It's quite possible that coufd increase te $118,000,» says Miller. Ho says the hospital could also face a revenue lost. of approi- mately $20,000, generated by self-pay patients - patienta not currently .,insured under 0H11' and who must foot the bill for hospital charges themselves. Miller says the $20,000 figure 15 an average, based on past years. "If the Ministry (of Health) picks up on this in our budget, thon ft doesn't mean much te, us financially. If not, it will take away further from our health care services," ho says. Miller says «pretty well» aIl of the hospital employees are cur- rently covered under 0HIP. The hosjpital shares in some staff OHlPpremUMS. Whie says the new health tax wiIi be 'good for citizens who were previously unable te pay 0H11' promiums, Miller says the new levy could be detrimen- tal te the hospital. "As far as we're concerned, unless itfs recognized in our budget, its going te be very harmful te the hospital, because of the costs.»