Storm Aftermath
The sound of the chainsaw has been heard in our town for the past week as people removed downed trees from their yards, sidewalks and, unfortunately, often their houses.
The unprecedented windstorm of last Sunday thankfully didn’t cause any fatalities in Jefferson County, or even any serious injuries that I’ve heard of. But it pointed up something we need to consider for the future, especially in the downtown, the oldest part of Madison: Some trees are so old that they need to be taken down on purpose, before they are blown down by some freak storm like we had a week ago. This time, we lost only buildings and other property. If there’s another time, we might not be so lucky.
Sure, trees on people’s property can be removed at their discretion. My next-door neighbors had two very large ones removed from their back yard a few months ago — and thank God they did, because my guess is that at least one would have blown down on either their house or mine.
But often, the trees that fell last Sunday were on public property. And many of them were very, very old — more than a century, in several estimates. For instance, I was told that the tree which blew down and broke one of the historic stained-glass windows in the Christ Episcopal Church was hugely hollow — rotten — inside. The two huge trees that blew down in John Paul Park were also extremely old, according to a city official.
Old, towering trees are beautiful to look at, and sit under. They provide shade, nesting places for birds, and hollows where squirrels set up housekeeping and hide the nuts they gather. They furnish beautiful subjects for landscape painters. They are among the most majestic of God’s creations.
But if they aren’t harvested occasionally, when they get really old, and new trees planted in their place, then the result can be disastrous. Witness our wind storm of last Sunday. The city of Madison and its tree board need to direct their attention not only to protecting our public trees, but also to recognizing when they have become too old, unstable, and (often) hollow to be safe any longer around habitations. Then, sentiment and tree hugging have to give way to practical and humane considerations.
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We all saw and heard about the disastrous Hurricane Ike which hit Galveston, Texas, during the past week. Our huge wind storm originated as Ike.
I’m going to use that as an excuse to tell a little personal story.
In about 1840, an immigrant ship from England landed in Galveston. On it among the other passengers was a 20-year-old Englishman from Bepton, Surrey. He and a group of other young immigrants set out walking north and east with their meager possessions, trying to reach the Mississippi River.
They were passing through an area which had had a severe drought, and as they trudged on and on the men’s thirst grew and grew. They were finally in serious peril for their lives.
Finally they came to a place where the drought had been broken by a thunderstorm recently, and then cattle had been driven through a place where the ground was bare. Rainwater still stood in the hoofprints left in the newly-formed mud.
The other men in the group threw themselves down into the mud, greedily gulping the water as fast as they could. But the 20-year-old from Surrey somehow knew that this was a potentially fatal mistake. He knelt down, drank a few mouthfuls of water, then crawled away and rested for a while. Then he crawled back, drank a little more water, then rested.
The others with him gorged themselves on the water, and before long all of them died from the effects of such rapid re-hydration. But the young Surreyman eventually regained enough strength to get up and trudge on. His exact path the next two or three years appears to be lost to history, but by 1845 he had settled in Trimble County, Ky., and owned a small farm there. And that year he got married.
The young man’s name was James W. Wingham. His bride was Frances Monroe. The young couple had eight children. And today, all of the Winghams in Trimble County and Jefferson County, and a number of other locations in Greensburg, California, and elsewhere, are descended from young Jim Wingham and his wife. That includes my late mother, who was born a Wingham. If it wasn’t for Jim Wingham (and Frances Monroe Wingham), my great-great-grandparents, then kinfolks, none of us would be here. Thank God he knew not to drink too long or deeply.
Old Corporal <corporalko@yahoo.com>
Storm aftermath, – Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 20:20:07 (EDT)
