Friday, August 3

     Welcome to the Wannaskan Almanac for Friday.

     It was on this day in 1955 that Hurricane Connie began pounding the east coast of the United States. Connie was the second of three major storms that year that indirectly led to my moving to Minnesota.
     Alice was the first storm. It had little impact on the U.S. Connie however did much damage in North Carolina and Virginia before heading up to the Great Lakes. Hurricanes always weaken when they go cross country. They need warm ocean water to maintain their status.
     The third storm, Diane, was the real doozie as far as New England was concerned. Diane came along less than a week after Connie. It walloped N.C. again then headed inland where it was downgraded to a tropical storm. Instead of blowing itself out, Diane headed northeast, got a drink of warm water, and hit Connecticut, R.I. and my state of Massachusetts, as hard as it could.
     I remember the day well. The power went out which didn't matter because it was daytime, and we could cook on the gas stove. There were no big trees in our yard, but we enjoyed watching the neighbor's tree sway in the wild wind as rain lashed the windows. We played inside that day.
    By next morning the storm had passed and I went out and assessed the damage with my friends JoJo MacDonald and Billy Hilly (their real names, I'm not being silly). There were numerous big trees down all over the neighborhood, and we scrambled through the caves of the upper branches until a big person chased away. Something about live wires tangled in the branches.
     Eventually the power came back on and the mess was cleaned up. A couple of weeks later a crew came in to take down the tree next door.  "Why?" I asked. It had survived the storm just fine. "They're afraid it will fall on their house in the next storm," my mother said. It was then I realized I loved trees more than some people do, and resolved to move to a place where I had control of the cutting.
    My resolves often weaken, like a hurricane over land, but it got a boost a few years later when my mother said the people across the street planned to cut down the tree in front of their house. The branches were rubbing against their bedroom window disturbing their sleep.
    Now this tree was an 80 foot tall maple that turned yellow in the fall. Then it turned to shimmering liquid gold as the setting sun hit it. Of course, we got to enjoy this view more than our neighbors did. My mother made a personal appeal to the neighbor and a few days later I saw the man of the house  on the roof of his front porch, trimming off the few offending branches. The tree survived, but if someone could so casually destroy such beauty, then hey, let's hang the contents of our museums on the walls of the subway stations and see how that goes.
     The final strengthening of my resolution came when I was living in the Philippines. Some of my navy buddies and I rented a house off-base. The house was part of a compound with a center courtyard shaded by a giant tree. Our neighbors were locals and I used to like to sit around chatting with them while sipping a Cerveza San Miguel.
    One day I returned home from work to discover the tree gone. I didn't bother to ask why. We immediately moved to a house in a more bucolic part of the barrio. And when I got out of the navy, I met a farmgirl from Roseau County and the rest is history.

Every little thing's gonna be alright.