Tony Tomeo

By modern standards, the public schools that I attended in the early 1970s would be considered to be bleak and primitive. The building were utilitarian and simple, from about twenty years earlier. The landscaping was comparably simple, with a big lawn and proportionately big shade trees. A screen of alternating Monterey pine and Monterey cypress was hedged on the southern half of the eastern boundary of the schoolyard. The only deviants to the simplicity were a few significantly older trees on the northern half of the eastern boundary of the school yard. There were two coastal redwoods, a Canary Island date palm, a cedar, and a spruce of some sort. They were all quite mature, and were likely remnants from an old farmhouse that was there before. Perhaps they wanted us to be aware that everything changes.
On the way to kindergarten, back when children were allowed to walk to school, I weaseled my way underneath the first Monterey pine and Monterey cypress on the southern end of the fence line, and fell asleep. I do not remember how long I stayed there, but it was long enough to get in serious trouble with my very worried kindergarten teacher. After that, I could only visit those two trees in passing, and perhaps stop only briefly to smell the foliage or shake some of the rain away.
Nearly four decades later, but only a few years ago, I was assigned the grim task of composing the arborist report that would justify the issuance of a permit to remove that same Monterey pine, which was the last that remained of the hedged trees that I remember. I did not know that when I went to the site. I was just told that it was a ‘pine’.
Visiting the old school was not a pleasant experience. The entire site was surrounded with a prison like fence and saran screens to obscure the view inside and out. There were no open gates. I needed to be escorted to the tree by a professional chaperone. Much of the schoolyard had been very synthetically landscaped with microtrees and pretty flowering shrubbery that was intended to impress parents rather than appeal to children. It is bad enough that there are no orchards or open spaces remaining in the region, but it is worse that children are deprived of the open lawns and trees and natural spaces that my generation had taken for granted on the grounds of our school. Are children even allowed to climb trees anymore? Do they know what dirt is? Can they observe a chrysalis split open to reveal a new butterfly before the gardeners shear the shrubbery and take the learning experience away? It was saddening.
Once I realized that the tree that I was expected to condemn was my old friend, I asked the chaperone, who seemed to know a bit about facilities at the site, why anyone would want the now mature tree to be removed. I knew that it had been mutilated while young, but was impressed with how it somehow recovered and developed a well structured trunk. I thought that perhaps someone noticed something that I was missing in my inspection. People who are not arborists are sometimes alarmed by something that is perfectly normal for a tree, such as furrowed bark, or slight seasonal foliar discoloration.
The chaperone explained that the tree needed to be removed simply because it did not conform to the style of the rest of the landscape. I waited for the rest of the answer, but that was it. The tree did not conform.
Nothing gave me more pleasure than to explain that after my evaluation of the health, stability and structural integrity of the subject, I could find no justification for removal.
I was dismissed.
Yes, it was worth it.
However, I knew that for the right price, another arborist would be pleased to condemn the tree. The picture of what remains suggests that the arborist who did so was not even professional enough to get his crew to finish the job. How does this dead stump conform to the rest of the landscape?
Those old trees, the redwoods, palm, cedar and spruce, were right. Everything changes.
The Monterey pine that would not conform is gone now, but it was right too.