MINOT – So, you want to impress the family this year with a gigantic Christmas tree. You get yourself a 14-footer, and you hope to wrestle it to the second floor of your home. Getting it up there will not be an easy feat, though. So, whom are you going to call?

For Linda Hayman, the choice was easy.

“I needed some men of muscle,” the 58-year-old said. “And I don’t know of three more muscular guys than these right here.”

The muscle-laden heroes in question are Dean Campbell, Ryan Demers and Dustin Barry, firefighters for the Minot Fire Department. The trio responded between calls to carry the mighty fir tree to the second floor of Hayman’s Death Valley Road home.

“Hey, it’s Christmas,” Dean Campbell. “It’s nice to help people when they’re not in trouble.”

As far as Hayman is concerned though, her trouble was real. She bought the massive evergreen from a farm in West Poland. It was majestic. It was immense.

And it sat in the back of a pickup truck outside her home while she and a friend tried to figure out a logical way to get it inside.

“My friend looked at it and said, What were you thinking?'” Hayman said. “We could just barely get it off the truck.”

Although it’s not part of their job description, Campbell, Demers and Barry took on the job. They are volunteer firefighters.

The tree had to be carried through a small porch and into the home. It had to be negotiated around furniture to the open stairway. Then it had to be hauled to the second floor, where it would stand tall beneath a high, cathedral ceiling.

“It was a piece of cake, really,” Campbell said. “It was mostly muscle. We had to lift it up over the railing, but it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t even break anything.”

There was one small detail to attend to.

“We put the angel on top before we put the the tree up,” Campbell said.

On Thursday night, the tree was standing tall in front of a large window overlooking the front of the house. A string of white lights coiled around the conifer.

“My nephews will be coming out to help decorate it,” Hayman said. “Right now, I’m enjoying it the way it is.”

Campbell, Demers and Barry didn’t want compensation for their deed. But Hayman sent them away with a batch of chocolate cookies just the same. And she offered to baby-sit their kids or make chicken soup if any of them gets sick.

“They were such good sports,” Hayman said. “I promised never to ask them to do it again. They’re really wonderful.”