The tradition started 13 years ago when the floors of around 100 Myrtle Beach-area homes had Pappy’s pine needles on them for the first time.
Then 12 years ago, around 200 local homes smelled of Pappy’s tree sap.
The next year, Pappy served around 300 families and for each year since, Pappy’s Christmas Trees Lot kept adding trees to their inventory annually to meet local demand.
His Forestbrook Road tree lot has been providing Horry County homes with Fraser Firs to adorn in ornaments and lights since 2009.
Helen Smith, current owner of Pappy’s Christmas Trees Lot, has leftover Christmas trees this year. She welcomes any one to come by and pick up a tree for free, if there are any left, starting Sunday, Dec. 18.
“This year, we got 830 trees,” Smith said. “It just got bigger and bigger. … And I’ve kept it going just for him.”
He wasn’t called Pappy until he had grandchildren. When she married him at 18 years old, Helen Smith knew him as Randy Smith, a boy whose childhood home was not far from her own, a boy that timidly asked her to save him a seat on the bus after a high school basketball game more than five decades ago.
“He was up in the bleachers with the varsity team and the boys were egging him to come down there and speak to me,” Helen Smith said. “December 3rd in Hemingway at a basketball game, he finally got enough nerve to come down there and sit beside me during the game and he asked me to save him a seat on the bus.”
She saved him a seat on the bus.
They married at the end of high school and stayed that way for 52 years and had three kids and multiple grandchildren who called him Pappy.
In 2012, when Pappy came down with Guillain-Barre syndrome and became paralyzed, his children and grandchildren operated the tree lot.
He eventually overcame his paralysis but the disease attacked him again a few years later and on April 8, 2020, Helen Smith noticed her husband wasn’t breathing and said goodbye to her high school sweetheart.
“He was a good man and I couldn’t have had a better husband or a better father to our kids,” she said.
When her husband first told her he wanted to sell Christmas trees to their community almost 15 years ago, Helen Smith said she liked the idea.
“I was happy he wanted to do it. He was retired and I thought it was a great idea,” she said.
The couple used their own property for the lot, organized the trees by size and set up holiday decor fit to be in the background of family photoshoots or to just set the mood for finding the right tree.
“Life's been good and the community loves it. You know, people come out here with photographers to take pictures and they don’t even have to buy a tree. We let anybody who wants to just come and let the kids play or whatever because some people don't use live trees. I used artificial trees for forever until we started to do this,” Helen Smith said.
She said that she and her husband started the tree lot not for themselves, but for the community. Randy Smith, who was a mailman, and Helen Smith, who served on the school board after owning a beauty salon, found themselves still wanting to be deeply involved in the community amid retirement, so they started the tree lot.
“We’re not here to make money. I’m not here to make money,” Helen Smith said. “It’s just something we do to serve our community because it’s just such a precious time. Christmas is my favorite time of the year.”
Pappy also loved this time of year. He was born exactly a month before Christmas on Nov. 25. He delivered holiday cards and gifts as a mailman for decades. He asked Helen Smith out during the month of December when he was just a teenager. And he spent much of his final years selling and donating trees to his community.
Helen Smith says that their grandchildren want to soon operate Pappy’s Christmas Trees Lot on their own to serve the community and honor their grandfather's memory.
Locals who want a tree in their home in time for Christmas but are not able to spare the funds for one can call Helen Smith at 843-385-0726 starting Sunday, Dec. 18 and ask if Pappy’s Christmas Trees Lot at 3550 Forestbrook Rd. in Myrtle Beach has any more trees available for pickup free of charge.
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