What I Learned From One Who Didn't Have Much To Offer

 I just watched a special about Walt Disney, the man who convinced us that dogs, elephants, bears, teacups and chairs, all sing, dance, and tell us stories.

I’m conditioned; I wouldn’t be too shocked if the books in my office started singing. The white pine tree in my parent’s yard never sang, “Be Our Guest,” but it did teach me something about hospitality. 

 It shaded a good third of the backyard at 207 S. 7^th Ave in Clarion, Pennsylvania. White pines have always been beautiful to me, with their iridescent green needles against blackish trunks and the blue sky. They smell like home and endless July afternoons and sound like whispering water, or far off singing, as the wind strums through them.

The tree in the backyard was so big it touched the sky. It took three or four kids to reach around it, but you couldn’t find anybody to do that and get pine pitch on their clothes or in their hair. Pine pitch smelled wonderful and gave you these dark patches on your hands as if you were a hard worker with calluses like my father got from changing tires.

Okay, I know the tree didn’t touch the sky but you could see it from out front if you were across the street in the Denio’s front yard looking back at our house. In addition, the tree was big enough to have a tire swing on one branch, a porch swing on another branch, and a tractor tire sandbox around behind them.

It kept the swings and sandbox in cool dappled shade with only a few sunrays making it the whole way to the pinecone- littered ground.

The tire swing was best when you went around and around tightening the rope until your feet didn’t touch the ground anymore. Then you let go, shut you're eyes and rode the whirling rope as it untwisted itself once more.

The sandbox was fun when you borrowed some of your brother’s matchbox cars and drove them up the tire treads and into the sand box city you constructed. The sandbox smelled like Dad’s tire shop, and offered endless possibilities after you scouted for ants and removed an occasional cat pooh.

The porch swing hung over a root—white pines have roots sometimes show above ground. This root was the push off place to get and keep the swing traveling. If you wanted to read, the swing was a great place too. You could lie still on your back and kick the swing chain to drift gently. Or you could just be still and daydream as you gazed up into filigree and wrought iron of needles and branches.

When the snow fell, the tree became a tent keeping the ground bare underneath as the braches bent down. Carefully my father, Judy, Jack, and I shook the braches. As the snow released the braches would bob up gracefully. We squealed with laughter to be suddenly standing inside a snow globe.

That tree was downed by lightning my senior year of high school.

It didn’t have much to offer really, just its beauty and its shade. It made a good playmate, and sang a lovely lullaby as you drifted off to sleep on a breezy summer evening.