Any more it isn't very often when anyone gets to listen to their parents talk about how things were when they were young let alone look to where they are pointing to and see what's being talked about. Not often, but every once in a while it does happen. Last summer it happened to me.
My parents had been living here working on what I call Pops Place, that is my grandfather's house. I don't recall the occasion on that particular day but our family had decided to have our evening meal at Pappa Al's and had ended up eating out on the patio of that fine establishment. The view isn't the greatest from there, just the back of the pizza parlor and the trail down to Wall street were the old depot, old bank, old Post Office and newspaper office are located. Also in prominence are two oak trees situated just east of the Pappa Al's patio.
While we ate, some people, obviously tourists, sitting near us made some comments about those two trees. Nothing bad mind you, just wrong. Something about the trees species and age. Now even I new there was some misinformation about exactly what kind of trees those were, but it wasn't until those tourists had left that I found out exactly how old those two particular trees were.. I mean are.
These two trees were in the yard of a group of buildings known as the Hammond Lumber Company Hotel. It stood on the bank overlooking what is now known as The island, that area was where the Hammond Mill was located. According to my mother, there was a time when the hotel was full of all sorts of rough and tumble types who for the most part made their living working for one part or another of the Hammond operations. Another inhabitant of that hotel was my mother and her parents, who managed the hotel at the time.
And what, you ask, does that have to do with those two old oak trees? Well, nothing. except that she (mom) can remember when they were small enough to put her arms around them. I guess what that means is that those two old trees aren't really so old after all. Mom is only in her seventies, so the trees can't be much more than, say, seventy to eighty, or so.
Nowhere near the couple of hundred years old those “Maple” trees must be to those tourists that afternoon last summer.
And, that, is history, in an acorn (nutshell)!