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PrintIn memory of fallen timbers
A few days later, they were all down on their sides, end to end like the Confederate dead after Shiloh.
Some mornings this fall, pedaling from Grandview to my record store on High Street near Ohio State University, I’d ride by Grandview Yard on Goodale Boulevard.
I’d see the backhoes at work, demolishing whatever had been built on the many acres that previously occupied what is now becoming a new retail/residential/lifestyle development brought to us by the folks at Nationwide.
As the gigantic machines did their destruction, the ever-flattening landscape looked more and more like a scene from H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds—giant alien enemy machines laying complete waste to humanity’s habitat.
But in this reality, the habitat included five tall, thick trees spaced some 50 or so yards apart, appearing to hold up half the sky.
I don’t know what kind they were, but I’d guess they were closer to a century in age than not. Majestic fellows they were.
As the surrounding acres came to resemble a World War I no man’s land, the more the lingering fate of these trees became painfully obvious. They were on Death Row of the advancing development.
The vigil was on.
Every morning I pedaled toward them. I still saw them erect and untouched several days in a row. I found myself hoping some nameless planner had some sort of idea to build around them. Spare these giants, sir or ma’am; they’ve never hurt anyone. Surely you can build around them. Surely SUVs can coexist side-by-side with these elder members of the arbor world.
Silly me.
The end came in stages and humiliatingly so.
One morning, they were still standing, but resembling five Venus De Milos: all trunk, no limbs. Every branch had been sawed off.
They looked pathetic, yet their giant trunks still so proudly beautiful in their defiance of modernity, man and machine.
They lived their final days like this, several more days, in fact. And each day I’d look at them, the backhoes still grinding up old concrete nearby, and think the glorious trees deserved a better fate.
A few days later, they were all down on their sides, end to end like the Confederate dead after Shiloh. Each of the humongous old boys had a large clump of dirt clinging to what roots they were allowed to take to the next life.
Somewhere, a chipper was being contracted for the final humiliation.
Progress, your cost is priceless.
