Here’s the story about Dad and the neighbor’s tree. The photo above was taken in August of 1969. My baby sister says she remembers the picture but not the incident, whereas my recollections are the opposite.
Let me tell you about that tree. I saw it from my bedroom at 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, looking towards the tree and the house at 1 Gaines. The photo was likely shot from our driveway.
The tree weirded me out. It reminded me of one of those mean trees in the Wizard of Oz movie: gnarled and sinister. Sometimes when I woke up from a dream, I would see an ominous face on the tree.
Sidebar (1965)
Here’s something only tangentially related. In 1965, when I was a 7th grader at Daniel S Dickinson Junior High School, there were some new kids in our class. One of them was Dawn, with flaming red hair. Based on a note her friend Bernadette passed me, Dawn seemed romantically interested in me. I was 12—she might have been a year or two older—and I had no idea what to do with this information, so I did nothing.
Back to the main story (1969)
The caption says the tree “accidentally crashed into the house… and the elm was being felled by the building’s owner when it tipped in the wrong direction into the building.”
My father is watching this young man, probably in his early twenties, work on this tree, ensuring it won’t strike our house. Dad told the guy that the tree would hit his dwelling. The fellow told Dad to mind his business as though this “old man,” who would have been in his early forties, was a foolish meddler. My father told me about this exchange before the tree was felled.
It “accidentally” hit 1 Gaines, which is technically accurate, but it was an avoidable incident. I don’t know the tenant in the photo; I suspect he lived upstairs, and the tree branches breached his dwelling area.
(Do you know how to “fell a tree” safely? If not, click here. This is from OSHA, which sister Leslie sent me.)
I think the owner lived downstairs with his wife, who I’m almost positive was Dawn from 7th grade, with a baby.
My father, an artist and floral designer, had excellent spatial acuity. He would have been 99 years old tomorrow.
PS: My sister