trees stillwater made home

Looming and above all the sycamore and its metal bucket earring grown into a
limb decades ago, full of rusty bullet holes and mulch of aeon leaves, but prior
in memory was the stout and gnarly trunk of a transpired elm, limbless and 
statuesque, gaunt. I scuffed my knees on its ancient sharp bark, intentionally,
jealous of baby brother grant hogging all the mommy love and cooing time. 
The tree was soon in our chimney smoke, warming our beds.
Above the basketball goal at the edge of the concrete slab over our storm
cellar was a big tree, not sure what kind. Like a catalpa tree, with seeds in a pod,
but these seeds were grape sized, very hard and deep brownish-black, four or
five to a pod, in a gooey kind of jelly, and the outer shell of the pods leathery
when fresh, then crispy. It was a pretty good climbing tree,  but nothing like
the sycamore. Around this tree and the basketball hoop, handmade by dad
in a rectangular shape, large cedar trees formed walls ofgreen hands, helping
toss back the errant shots of hundreds of hours of basketball fun.
Under these cedar trees, which grant and i cleaned out of leaves sticks and 
whatnot, we built cities and roads, constructed empires of blocks of wood,
toy trucks and tractors and leggos, and sometimes a litter of kittens in
a carboard box with a towel over the top so they won't get out. Cedar trees
not the best to climb in for the sap, and the scratchy itchy limbs, but the 
smell so good, and the deep dense camoflage and shade of its nature.  There
were nests to peer into, but taught not to bother them, and to never handle
the baby birds.
The cherry tree we planted produced the best sour cherries, pie on the 
picnic table, homemade ice cream in a hand cranked old wood barrel sort 
of thing, and the mystery of dry ice, and perhaps we had a pear tree, an
apricot tree. Mulberry trees fruit was fun, but only good to eat fresh and
when perfectly ripe it was incredible, the purple indigo stains all around
the ground, and in the bird shit, prominent on windshields and the basket
ball arena of this childhood. Get a soldier with a parachute and go up the
sycamore, to the end of the branch near the top, and heave it off so that
the parachute deploys and doesn't end up tangled terminally stuck.
Balsa wood planes, and model airplanes, cars, and spaceships were all at
the shop in town that also sold aquariums and tropical fish. It was a prime
destination to be left for an hour, near across the street was a miniature
golf course, and also the ice cream place with a zillion flavors.
Blackberries grew all around the section lines, red dirt roads paved in
typical gravel. On the land, there were persimmon trees, down below the
pond's dam, and damn your mouth if you tried to eat one not ripe. There
was a cuckoo who lived to laugh at those who tried persimmons not quite
ready, a cuckoo stationed there like a cloud. When perfect ripe, the 
persimmon was not too shabby, not too shabby. 
Hundreds of pines, planted when I was a baby, grew year by year as I
grew and ran through them with bows and arrows and baseball mits full
of rocks or pockets full of fireworks, hundreds of pines wet in the rain
or covered in snow and ice so heavy they bend over and get warped for life,
summer blistering hot the sap pops their bark open, the good years of wet
and lush make their candles, their branch tips slowly open out reverse
umbrellas, broken off in strong winds, little brooms, riding our bikes over
the carpet of pine needles, getting paid per wheelbarrow of death-dry 
needles we'd haul to the burn pile, smouldering all weekend, some lawn
chairs and beer cans, our three acre spread had so many spots to pioneer,
there were attempts to settle the pines with a tree house, also to 
use piled stone for various forts, but vetoed by parents, whereas simple
lean-tos of dead branches or scrap wood was usually fine, until it had to 
meet the burn pile.
The view from the top of our house rose above most all the trees, 
most certainly the ones bordering and surrounding it, so one could really
see into the distant horizons in all directions for a good long ways. A
knowledge of weather spent atop trees or balanced on the peak of
a two story house, and practice jumping ten feet, as well as hanging 
upside down to show off, that's the view a kid has on where they grow
up. We had trees, and big sky. We had crazy clouds, hail, and lightning
storms that would rattle the glass and flash and boom all in the wrong
order. 
The storm cellar was a concrete slab that served as our home's main
entrance, a door leading down into actual cellar room always spiderweb
covered, and often six inches or a foot of water, and sometimes frogs,
or a random scorpion down there, with ancient wood shelves and their
bottles of forgotten dandelion wine, so gross and dusty looking, the
entire cellar dismal not much of a refuge, tornado or not. The door
would rot over the years, and then be a hazard as the nearby basketball
court was the slab, roof and floor, of the cellar. We may have gone down 
once for an impending tornado, but I don't think so. The flimsy wood
door would have gone sailing off in bits and we'd of been sucked into
the eye of the winds.
The cedar trees all around our home facing the highway, tall and thick,
part of the sound of night and sleep, with weather sweeping water and
slapping branch tips , up to the windows curtainless and clear.