Step onto Rocky Brougham’s bustling Christmas-tree lot and inhale the heady smell of the green — pines, fir, money.
This is high season for Brougham. For 10 years he has turned the acreage around his creekside home in Evergreen into Luckylure Christmas Trees Holiday Activity Center. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, he sells hundreds of trees.
“I tell everyone I throw the best yard sale in the state,” he says.
It’s quite a production.
Trees run from $10 to $400, which buys you one big enough to put an elf in a truss. Visitors also get a sleigh and covered wagon to perch the tykes in for photos, wreaths and other holiday decorations, and a roving guy in a white beard and red suit.
Most of all you get Rocky Brougham in spades.
A few days ago he gave me the nickel tour of his “magic forest,” decked out in full winter-wonderland mode. The creak of fresh snow under boots, the scent of balsam, and a cobalt sky helped.
“If this ain’t a Christmas card, I don’t know what is,” Brougham says. “We have something the competition doesn’t. Everything else is a bunch of trees behind a chain-link fence.”
Brougham is a mix of Paul Bunyan and P.T. Barnum. Built like a stump and sporting an orange beard, he greets visitors like a carnival barker, Yuletide version.
“Merry Christmas, folks! Is this your first time here? Hey, look who’s coming!”
Santa lumbers up and drops to his knees in the snow, arms outstretched. Kids dash up. After a few centuries, you know your constituency.
Brougham seems to know his too. He prides himself on creating a theme-park vibe, with the screech of a chainsaw replacing the screams from the roller coaster.
Luckylure’s website — , if you’re interested — boasts that it was voted “Best Colorado Christmas Tree Lot Experience.” Don’t tell me Coloradans aren’t politically involved.
Exactly how many trees does Brougham sell? He won’t say. The question is greeted as the arboreal equivalent of asking a rancher how many cattle he runs. It’s just not done.
But Brougham is happy to talk about his trees.
Most of his stock comes from the Midwest. Colorado trees take longer to reach maturity, he says, because our state is so arid. Pacific Northwest trees are prone to frostbite.
For customers wanting to put the “green” into evergreen, Brougham notes that many of his suppliers practice sustainable yields, lopping off their Christmas trees from the top of a fir or pine.
“That way you get something for your living room, but the tree in the forest keeps on living,” Brougham says.
He holds up a triangular chunk of granite that was painted red and white and topped with a bell. “Jingle bell rocks,” he says. “Get it?”
Ah, entrepreneurship.
Looking for inspiration
James and Gerrie Jones drove here from Arvada with their four children. They are seeking a tree about 6 to 7 feet tall — your basic pro basketball player, only with branches and sap. This is their fifth year.
“We walk around until we’re inspired,” James says. “That’s how we do it. It’s our family tradition.”
Brougham beckons me to the side of his fieldstone house, hard by a frozen creek running beside Highway 73.
Propped against the wall are a row of puny evergreens. Brougham pulls one out and shakes the snow from its ragged branches.
“These are Charlie Brown trees,” he says. “These are the weird trees, the strange trees. Trees that need homes.”
Some of them sell for as little as 10 bucks. Customers who look as scraggly as the pine might land one for less.
Brougham ponders the pine. “Someone will come in and say it’s the perfect tree, because it needs love.”
He turns back to the lot. A new wave of customers has arrived.
It is Christmastime, and there are trees to sell.
William Porter’s column appears twice a week. Reach him at 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com.
