On May 1, 2021 I will celebrate an anniversary. On that date, thirty years ago, I bought my house. And like a lot of us living the American dream, I owe more today on the principal balance than the original purchase price.
One of the things I liked most about my house was the huge silver maple tree that stood in the front yard. This tree sat directly in front of what was originally intended to be a carport, but was always used as a porch. I had it converted to a sunroom with a beautiful marble floor not long after my mother passed away, but it is no longer used for that purpose, though I hope to live to see the day that it is returned to that use.
I refused to let anyone touch that tree. I didn’t even want it trimmed—I wanted it to grow naturally undisturbed. It was a wonderful shade tree, and even the leaves it shed in the fall were a challenge to chop up with the lawnmower (always preferred to raking). I used to meditate on that tree—how old was it? Older than the house? Who was president then? What stories of events that had happened under its leafy branches could it tell?
When I renovated the house in 2008, my wife wanted a new living room. So away went my beautiful fifteen foot long, six foot tall bank of living room windows—that opening became the entrance to the new living room. I had always wanted to replace the porch after turning the original into a sun room, and a porch was added to the front of the living room addition. Now I could rehang my porch swing, though the remainder of my front porch furniture that had followed me from my previous residence was sold by my wife to one of her relatives for a disappointingly low price. In front of the sun room and to the side of the new living room closest to the driveway an uncovered patio was built.
All this addition to the front of the house moved the house much closer to the tree, which was fine in one respect, though I always thought it more pleasant to gaze at the tree from afar than to practically be covered in its untrimmed branches. Still, I refused to let anyone mutilate my lovely tree.
So what did the tree give me? In addition to its beauty and shade, it gave me a link to a past of which I would never know the particulars. A sense of mystery, of the past undisturbed by the passage of time.
So when the house was remodeled, the number of bathrooms doubled, and the number of residents tripled. One of those residents was my stepson Dustin, who suffered from cerebral palsy, and had almost all of the almost eleven years he lived there two people caring for him around the clock. Basically, there were five people in the house at all times.
This put a major strain on the septic system and drain field. To make a long story short, the plumber ran a snake down the drain and came up with a tree root! The septic tank was uncovered, and a huge ball of tree roots from the lovely silver maple had invaded the system, taking over the tank to the point that it could not carry the load of the number of people who depended upon it.
I could not help but think of the phrase that Randy Carver quoted so often, “No good deed goes unpunished.” I had spent eighteen years guarding that tree, not allowing anyone to touch it, and it repaid me by destroying my septic system. It cost me a few thousand dollars to have the house connected to the sewer, and thank God that was even an option. A very few short years previously, there would have been no sewer close enough to the house for connection.
So I made the painful decision to have the wonderful tree cut down. My wife found someone she knew who cut the tree at a good price, though it still cost several hundred dollars. Then there was the problem of finding someone who would take the wood. It is so interesting that you can’t hardly give anything away these days, even good firewood. We finally found one of the caregiver’s husband who took the wood away, though the only profit I realized from that deal was getting the wood removed at no cost.
My next door neighbor Johnny Thomas took some of the wood to use in his woodworking shop. It was difficult for him to find enough good wood from the silver maple to make very much. It turned out the tree was diseased and mostly hollow on the inside, closer to the end of its life than the beginning.
This brought back a memory of the trip I took with my good friend Mark Martin to Jamestown, Virginia. I was so excited. I thought all the way there, “I am with my very eyes going to see the very trees that our forefathers looked at in 1608.” Imagine what a fool I felt when the guide told us that not one tree was left that was there when our forefathers peopled the area. There I was, principal of a school, and didn’t even realize that! Trees have life spans, just like humans, and though I didn’t know it until the silver maple was cut, it was approaching its natural death.
That tree wound up taking a lot of money out of my rainy day fund, but thanks to my wonderful neighbor Johnny Thomas, the tree is still giving. Johnny made me a wooden walking cane, and the handle is made from the silver maple tree from the front yard. I have a feeling that someday that cane will be useful in my old age. He also made me a lovely small wooden bowl from the wood. I enjoy both of these articles, partly because a good neighbor cared enough to make them for me, but also because through him the silver maple, though now a memory, lives on through his craftsmanship.
I leave you, friends, with a few morsels of wisdom from my world of email:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
--Thomas Jefferson

"You can get a goat to climb tree, but you’d be better off hiring a squirrel.”

--Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy

Oak trees do NOT produce acorns until they are fifty (50) years of age or older.

If money doesn't grow on trees, how come banks have branches?