We could not afford to purchase the house. The landlady offered it to us "cash," using an aphorism that I thought only my mother used. "That way we don't need to work through real estate agents"
But we couldn't afford to buy it. Not that it was an amazing house. It was a total grandma house with an illegal added back addition and patch work moss embedded into the shingles of the garage roof. When it rained. water would seep from the corners of the basement and push out quarter sized spiders. But it was huge worth crannies and storage that made me imagine its past. This used to be a speakeasy. Or a stop on the Underground Railroad! Never mind it's a 50s bungalow, I knew it had a story beyond the mundane. But it would have been easy to stay.
We moved to another little suburb 10 minutes away. Cuyahoga County is partitioned into dozens of baby fiefdoms that feel very different to those that live in them.
"Those are River people. We live in Bay"
"Oh we live in the heights. Shaker, not Cleveland"
It felt no different but I was glad to have a place and time off that let me take advantage of cheaper move rates during the work week. The new landlady, a silver haired British lady, told us that the previous tenant complained of a tree with a bad smell. It was the one in the front. Just be careful. An FYI.
An aside that for a spell I dabbled in field biology. Not scientifically but I challenged myself to identify trees by their bark not the leaves. Because, will the tree have leaves in winter? I kept a puny life list of birds in the dog eared coffee stained Audubon bird guide. For a brief summer I knew the difference between broad leaf and and narrow goldenrod. I cant anymore but I remember it wasn't the width of the leaves! I knew the difference between Joe Pyed Weed and Boneset. A trash ailanthus tree against a native black walnut. The scientific name of the House Sparrow is Passer Domesticus. Of the common Robin...Turdus Migratorius. I'm better than the average person but the average person knows nothing. Its enough to impress anyone who isn't even a bit of an outdoors person.
However this tree was unusual. Big serrated leaves akin to the embellished arrowheads you would use for a football logo. Pipe cleaner flowers that spindle out like the paper strings from a New Years popper.What was it? I then consulted my North American Tree guide by Audobon (This was a series of gifts for a few birthdays with each book in the series a nice faux leather cover in a solid color. They looked slick on a coffee shelf even the ones i never used. The guide to North American mammals. Weather. The Night Sky. Insects and Spiders. Mushrooms. Wildflowers. I never got the freshwater fish one.
 |
| Source: Audubon.org |
Of this, I am certain. Fucking nailed it.
But, then in early September the flowers wither. They fall in wormy macabre heaps of fuzz onto the ground. They are replaced by angry fuzz balls looking the results of an awful experiment.
Look at how I merged this tennis ball and puffer fish. It hurts like a mother fucker and the needles stay sharp eternally. They are botanical razors at the first budding of the fruit and still equally as sharp once they dry into husks.
And I had seen this before. In college. During one of those amateur naturalist treks with an ex-girlfriend. Those spines were longer and better defined. And the inside of that seed was soft. So soft that I assumed it was velvet. And not an analogy, but literally this was velvet. This is where it came from before it was stitched onto couches.
It was a chestnut! And where that first husk was rare here was a whole tree of them. In my front yard and so fecund that it was a hassle to be around it.
Hadn't this tree been wiped out? A symbol, like the Passenger Pigeon or bison, of where manifest destiny symmetrically everyone?
Was this a post-modern living fossil? Was it worth anything? Was it a "Notable Tree" as some signs around town said in select front yards?
Did we have something special?
No comments:
Post a Comment