by MK Handley

Created on: June 26, 2009

In the summer of 1958, I was seven years old. I often visited my Grandmother, who lived only two blocks away, on Oakland Park Avenue. Why did they call it "Oakland Park", when it was lined with American Elm Trees? I pondered this mystery one afternoon, as I sat on Grandma's hard wooden front step. I picked at a bubble in the peeling gray paint, as the sun baked the top of my head, and drew little beads of sweat to the surface of my upper lip.

As I perched there, I drew my knees up to my chin and relished the contrasting coolness of the shaded street before me. The Elms towered above the street, making me feel dwarfed. Rising from a massive, rough-barked trunk, the trees spread at the top, lacing the cloudless sky beyond with a profuse bouquet of green.

The branches were like great brown arms, reaching out over the street, forking and tapering until they seemed to end in delicate fingertips. The fingertips of the trees that were lined up on my side of the street stretched out to touch the fingertips of the trees on the opposite side, forming a deeply shaded tunnel that bridged the street. They reminded me of my friends, making a tunnel with upraised arms, fingers touching, as they sang "London Bridge". In the same way that one of my friends would skip through our bridge of hands and arms, a crimson De Soto sedan came dancing down the street, its tires singing "wha-da, wha-da, wha-da"on the cobble-brown bricks. Its hot brightness cut through the coolness of the shady tunnel, as it disappeared into the intersection below.

I stared after it for a few moments, but another motion drew my eyes to the sidewalk at my feet. As the sun scorched the pavement, a tiny green beetle with a black dotted back, scurried across the heated surface to dive into the safety of a cool, mossy crack at the sidewalk's edge.

I am grateful that I could not gaze into the future on that summer afternoon. The beetle would carry a fungus to the Elm trees, causing them to sicken and die, turning the street into a sunny road like any other. In a few years, the city workers would come and spread asphalt across the brick street, like apple butter on a piece of toast, silencing forever the singing of the tires. But, that day, the memory of the cool, green tunnel of the trees and the singing of the tires on brick, would be stitched into the fabric of my memory, and there it would remain forever.

The next time I must drive to the University, I will travel through that part of town. I will miss the shaded coolness of the old street. There are still a few American Elm Trees alive today, and Biologists are working to find a way to save them.

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