My grandparents had a place outside of town. It fronted the broad and open expanse of the Neuse River in North Carolina. Their acreage was surrounded by woods as well as open fields of broom straw. There were no fences; there was a dirt road that ran from the “highway.” Their land and area around it had at one time been part of a small dairy farm. Now the cows were gone although the barn was still there. The pastures had grown into broom straw or stands of young pine trees.
My grandfather built his house, the River House, in the late 1930s. A hundred yards to the east the Neuse River flowed slowly by. In the front, across the driveway, was a tall pine which was the first thing we would see as we rushed out the door.
With its central location in our vision of our home – and of our lives – the tree marked the passage of our days. We would say, “I’ll meet you at the Big Tree in five minutes. I have to go get the shovels from the pump house.” When we got outside our cousins would be coming up the path that crossed the gulley to their house dragging their own shovels behind them. Obviously on this day we were going to actually discover Blackbeard’s treasure.
Sometimes the Big Tree was a backdrop in family pictures of our young lives. This picture shows the family and the yard, and behind the car (at the rear wheel) is the Big Tree. The tree was ten to fifteen years old in this picture. Our family is from left to right standing; Uncle George, Aunt Celia, and my mother, Alma (holding me). In the front row is Aunt Carol, my grandfather (Pop) and my grandmother who is holding the Baby Elizabeth (Aunt Celia’s daughter + my cousin). My brother, Dick, is sitting on the ground.
It is summer, and in the yard are the ephemera of our life, a playpen for Elizabeth and on the right is Dick’s wagon. The wagon was used to haul all sorts of treasures. In front of the wagon is a kind of hairy splotch in the picture. It is our faithful dog and watchful guardian, Blackie. She was our companion in the fields and woods and on the river bank. The picture was taken in 1949, the year Elizabeth was born. I was one year old and still in my mother’s arms. My brother was four years older than me.
The picture on the left above was taken on the day of Elizabeth’s baptism (I assume from her dress), That would have been in January or February, and we all dressed for cooler weather. I imagine that neither I nor my brother attended as I would have been noisy and running around. Dick had to stay home and hold me down. This was an occurrence that would happen again and again over our lives. The wagon we are sitting in had been emptied of treasure. (I spent my share on my hat.). My brother’s name is emblazoned on the back. Just behind my grandmother you can see the tree from a slightly different angle as we were on the side of the driveway.
The picture above right is of my parents. It was taken seven years later when we again lived with my grandmother. This was after my grandfather had died. They are dressed for a formal summer function at the Marine Base at Cherry Point. You can see that over the intervening years the Big Tree has grown into its name. Dick and I attended Brinson school. In the mornings we would rush out the door, dash past the Big Tree, and run down the road to catch the school bus at the highway. If we missed the school bus, we would run shouting through the fields of broom straw and catch it further along its route.
The last picture of the Big Tree was taken in 2011 after Hurricane Irene. Jim stands next to the hole left when the tree was blown over. The root ball is nearly 20 feet across. Over the years the house had been moved, and now it faced the river. Irene had been accompanied by days of heavy rain, and the area received a rain total greater than 17 inches. The soil was saturated and had no ability to hold the Big Tree as it had when the winds of other and more severe hurricanes had howled through the tree tops and pushed hard against it’s massive trunk.
The Big Tree was torn from the earth, but it is not dead as it lives in all our visions of summer and fall at the Old River House. It stands ghost-like as a monument to our family who gathered in its shade for four generations.
If someone asks what place is this, the answer is it is a place in my heart filled with the smell of summer and of ripe pears in the fall.
