The League of Industrious, Functionally Alcoholic Homeless bums of Hartford take anyone's tree and use it to construct their annual after-christmas Winter Village in a city owned field next to the graveyard in Downtown that had all the corpses wash away in 1937 when the Great Connecticut River flooded for the 28th time since Thomas Jefferson croaked.

They use the small logs and copious branches from the dead christmas tree to build a series of makeshift "lean tos", and a number of small Dog House-like cabins that jussssst fit a man for sleeping. I usually provide several hundred dollars along with my dead tree(s) so that they may throw themselves one helluva a block party when this environmentally friendly version of a shanty town is finished....the cops let them stay there until April when Little League begins.

Tax deductible you ask? You bet your ass....