Even Holy Water Won’t Help!

In 1972 I had been married for seven years. I graduated high school in 1961. I helped Dad move houses since I was 12 years old. But after graduation I finally started getting paid for all of my work. Since then, I worked with him till he passed away in 1975. I kept moving hundreds of buildings till I retired in 2000.

This story happened about 50 years ago. We were in Rosenberg, getting ready to relocate a house to a new location. My job was to clear around the house any trees or brush that was in the way for the move. If trees were in the way, I would cut them even with the ground. For the smaller ones, I would pull out roots and all by using our winch truck. I was the hook-up man, hooking the cable to each tree. When we got to this particular tree, I noticed the large green leaves and how the trunk was nice and straight. It was a shame to destroy it. This tree was about two inches in diameter and about four feet tall. Then I got this idea that I would save it and take it home with me. So I took off my sweat-soaked shirt and wrapped it around the trunk to keep it from getting bruised by the cable. The ground was sandy and moist so it came up roots and all. I then wrapped the roots in my shirt and poured water over it. I threw the tree onto the winch truck and forgot all about if for the rest of the day.

In the evening we climbed onto our winch truck and headed home to come back the next day. In those days my dad never took a pickup truck to the work site. He took only three trucks: Our tool truck, the house pulling truck loaded with long beams and the Aframe truck used to unload the iron beams and dollies. So whenever we worked on a job that took more than one day, we would get in the winch truck and head home. The cab was only made for three people – my brother, George Jr. (always the driver), my Dad and my favorite uncle Jerry Kana. The rest of us work hands had to ride on the back. The truck was a flatbed with no side boards. There was a pipe headache rack over the winch so we just held onto it whenever there was a sharp curve coming up.

Now in those years the speed limit was 55 mph. The wind was whistling by pretty fierce and I noticed that my tree was starting to loose all of its leaves. As a matter of fact, there was not one leaf left on that tree. As I jumped off the truck at my driveway, I grabbed my wooden lunch box and started to walk towards my house that was about 200 feet away. All of a sudden I remembered my tree still on the truck. As George started to pull away, I hollered for him to stop. My uncle Jerry asked what I wanted and I told him I forgot my tree. As I got my leafless tree and started walking away, he asked me what I intended to do with that “piece of twig.” I told him I was going to replant it in my back yard.

Now, my Uncle Jerry happened to be my favorite uncle. He told me jokes. He laughed and found even the smallest things in life to have a fun side. So when I told him about planting this tree, I will never forget what he said to me: “Florian, when you get ready to plant that poor tree, you had better have plenty of holy water handy. I don’t think even holy water is going to help.”

But plant it I did. A few months later, lo and behold, it got a new set of leaves. Since then I have watched it grow taller and taller as the years went by. I have my “Snoopy Wind Vane” next to it and each morning from my bathroom window I can look out and check Snoopy to see how fast the wind is blowing and which direction and I’ll marvel at the beautiful cottonwood that outgrew my 35 foot tall Snoopy. It actually was about 15 feet higher but a bolt of lightening struck the top of it and knocked it off. But once again, it survived.

These 50 years have passed by so quickly. They say you should stop and smell the roses every day. Maybe I didn’t do that but each day I looked out my window and watched that Cottonwood growing bigger – 50 years, or 18,250 days!