A sad day

It's always a sad day in the neighborhood when you lose a tree to bugs or rot or just sheer age. But today is an especially hard one—we on Bassett Street are losing the "World Tree."

Back when these houses were built in 1948, the city put in Ash trees in the median strip on both sides of my block, and by the time I moved into my house in 1981, they were at maximum height and glory, and every summer our street was a green bower of shade. For some reason our street was the only one out of the surrounding five or six between Vanowen and Sherman Way to have a full complement of street trees, and it made our block special.

The weird thing was, apparently when the city planted the trees there were a few cuckoos in the nest, so to speak—along with the regular Ash trees, they had half a dozen Shamel Ash, which grow to about five times the height and girth that the regular ones do. They planted them randomly, one per block, across the whole neighborhood, and once they reached maturity they towered over everything else—you could look out diagonally across the neighborhood and see the tops of those from anywhere.

Ours was about four doors down on the opposite side of the street from me, and I always loved looking at it, because it just seemed so primal amidst the more conventional pack of trees. It was full of birds and animals, and its exuberant roots burst out of the ground to buckle the sidewalk up two full feet, and then invaded the street as well. Because of that, which didn't bother the residents but did bother the city (and perhaps the plumbing), we all figured it was just a matter of time; but lack of funding for street tree maintenance these past few decades has preserved it long after I expected it to be gone.

Today, however, is the day. I don't know if it has succumbed to the rot that infected most of the rest of the under-watered street trees (which are not really a good choice for droughty Southern California) and took them out one by one over the years, or whether the city just decided to finally do something about the sidewalk, street, and DWP main lines. But five trucks and a dozen guys showed up this morning, beep-beeped themselves into position and started up the chainsaw. By the time I realized what must be happening and ran out to see, half the tree's branches were down. It will probably take them a full two days to get it out of here, and it's heartbreaking, especially because all that's left on our street are five half-grown replacement trees and maybe three of the original trees, elderly and fragile.

Above is a picture I drew of it a couple of years ago, and this doesn't nearly encompass the height (I ran out of room on the page) or magnificence of this tree. But it's the only memento I have.

There is a program through "City Plants" and the DWP where you can sign up to be a block captain and then go house to house to sign up all your neighbors for a new street tree. Once you have surveyed the whole neighborhood, you turn in your order for the correct number of trees, plus your top three choices for what kind of tree you would like, and the city will deliver them. I meant to do that this past year, but when the pandemic hit so many plans changed. But there's no reason I can't mask up, maintain distance, and go talk to the neighbors—I could use the exercise. Perhaps this will be my winter project.