Ten years ago, the Cherry tribe purchased twenty acres east of Greenwood, Texas. Greenwood, for those of you who don't know, is not a town. Greenwood is a school district east of Midland, Tx. It began as a small farming community, and the school district, which employs my wife, was named for two Baptist preachers, the Rev. Green and the Rev. Wood. There is a town in northeast Texas, between Sulphur Springs and Mt. Pleasant, named Greenwood. And, the State of Texas is narrow minded about having two towns of the same name.
Since we can't create a new town named Greenwood, everyone has been satisfied to leave it as a school district. This is probably a good thing for those of us who live out here. Although, when I first moved to Greenwood in 1990, I participated in the debate about who is the Mayor of Greenwood. Some said the school Superintendent, some, the High School Principal, and still others, the Chief of the Volunteer Fire Department, but I leaned towards the Barber. Charles was there everyday, and his shop was the center of local gossip and rumor. If one wanted to know what was going on in Greenwood, a haircut would satisfy curiosity. I miss Charles.
The Cherry tribe began looking for a five acre plot to call our own, but we just couldn't find five acres for sale with a reasonable expectation of water. We consulted our friend, Winn King (King Windmills), who had a good idea about where one might find water and where water might be scarce. After much searching and viewing of local real estate listings, we resorted to wandering around. One afternoon, we turned down a random road and found a "For Sale by Owner" sign.
This old and forlorn sign simply listed a phone number. We called and ended up buying twenty acres instead of the five we had originally planned. Now, years later, we wish we had bought forty acres instead of twenty. We wanted seclusion with a buffer from nearby neighbors. Our closest neighbor is probably 100 yards away, and we recognize that while they are certainly nice neighbors, it is still too close!
The twenty acres was nothing more than a mesquite pasture, with a dirt county road on one side and an oil field lease road leading up to the other side. We hired Bobby Stalvey to cut a short road connecting to the lease road and clear a small area where we could invite a mobile home to temporarily sustain the tribe until a more suitable house could be acquired. I bought the ugliest, oldest, smallest, most uncomfortable mobile home I could find. The idea was to encourage us to move forward and get out of the derelict. I was afraid that if we bought a nice new mobile home, we might just get comfortable and become "trailer trash."
So, there we were. The derelict only had two bedrooms, requiring the Cherry girls to double up, and when the wind blew and dust storms visited, we sometimes needed a shovel to clean out the sand. The "Blessed Mother Cherry," (so named by Brother Amos) took to wetting paper towels and stuffing them around the window casings to slow down the fine powder that seeped in during dust storms. After a number of months, during which we all suffered in relative silence, I relented and a new mobile home was purchased. Dispositions immediately improved, and life was once again bearable.
By now you are probably wondering what all of this has to do with "A Tale of Six Sisters?" There are two considerations for those of us who live in a mesquite pasture. The first problem is the wind. It blows. And blows. And blows. Having spent most of my life living in towns where the wind is somewhat lifted by buildings and carefully planted trees, I had observed that out on the prairie and around cotton farmers' homes, everyone planted wind breaks. Additionally, as we used an oil field lease road to gain access to our property in the beginning, it also meant that there was oil field equipment in plain view from our new home.
So, I began to research wind breaks. I wanted something that grew fast and tall. Something to hide the nearby tank battery and pump jack. Something to provide a little privacy from the oil field workers who periodically visited the location. And, I encountered "Austrees." The Colorado firm offering these hybrids from New Zealand claimed rapid growth and long life for a variety of trees. Pictures showed lush windbreaks that towered over their smiling owners. Yep, I bit.
I ended up buying three varieties to help solve my problem. One of the varieties is a tree similar to a poplar but named for its leaf color. New leafs bud out with a purple tinge before turning full green. We planted six "Rapid Merlots," and they became known around the Cherry compound as "The Sisters." Six silent sentinels standing shoulder to shoulder in a long line. One of the Sisters became a twin with two towering trunks. I later realized they were Siamese twins joined at the foot, which caused me to vacillate between six or seven Sisters.
The Blessed Mother Cherry named them the Sisters after noticing that when the wind blew, the Sisters whispered to one another in a language all their own. They whispered their secrets to one another as sisters will, chattering back and forth. It was a pleasant sound.
The Sisters served admirably in the summertime, blocking the unseemly view of oilfield tanks and equipment. I secretly hoped that the oil would play out and the tanks would eventually be removed, but in the meantime, the Sisters satisfied my eye as I gazed in their direction.
In the winter time, the Sisters would disrobe, dropping their ample leaves, standing brazenly naked to endure the mild but sometimes cold winter days and nights. And, absent their green robes, the oilfield equipment dominated the view beyond. I decided, two years ago, to plant a row of Brothers behind the Sisters. Afghan pines would fill-in the winter background and hide the unpleasant view, to be replaced by the finery of the Sisters during the summer; an alternating view of green leaves and green pine needles.
And then came Afghanistan. I don't know the conclusion that might be drawn from planting Afghan pines and my year in Afghanistan, working with the Afghan National Police, but suffice to say that somehow Afghanistan hurt the Sisters. While I had instructed the Blessed Mother Cherry on the care and feeding of all the trees around the Cherry compound, something went wrong for the Sisters.
Almost immediately after my return for a much needed leave in March of 2009, my wife warned me that the Sisters were in trouble. They had died from the top down during the winter. One had completely passed-on, while four (or five, depending on how one counts the Siamese twins) had died back to within about five feet of the ground. One had endured as if nothing were going on, and one had only died near the top. The Sisters had become less.
A few weeks ago, with the aid of my long-time friend and attorney, Mark Tatum, we hitched up the dead sister to my Nissan pickup and pulled her down. Dang. Yesterday, I finally confronted the rest of the chore before me. The suffering Sisters had to give up their dead trunks. I knew the dead wood had to be removed before the West Texas wind did it for me. Additionally, the Sisters looked horrible with their green bases and dead bodies.
It felt like I was giving them lobotomies or serious amputations as Sarah and I removed the dead trunks. The view has been altered. At least in winter, they looked almost normal. However, when the great dove migration began last Fall, tens of doves would flock to the Sisters, bending the dead limbs until the weight of the doves would snap the overcrowded perch. Snap! Startled doves, in momentary free-fall until their wings caught air, would dash about until they found new perches, only to be shortly followed by another snap! And, so it was, the white-winged dove began the pruning process which let me know what had to be done. And, yesterday we owned up to our responsibility, and all but two of the remaining Sisters grew much, much shorter.
The Afghans behind them aren't tall enough to fill the void yet, and it will be a few years before they can take over the job. I don't know what the Sisters will look like this Spring, or whether or not they will grow new trunks to replace what was lost. Eventually, the job will fall to the Brothers, full-time.
Until then, I will morn the Sisters. They were like old friends, standing over our small corner of paradise. They had become an icon of the Cherry compound, helping to define our separation from the mesquite pasture and the oilfield.
This morning, over coffee, the Blessed Mother Cherry cried over our loss. "Haven't you ever cried over the loss of a tree?" she asked. I guess I haven't. I'm a cave man, after all. But that doesn't mean I don't feel the loss. That doesn't mean that I don't grieve and morn them. I do. I cared for the Sisters.
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