Views from 1938 and 2008

By Marilyn Sippy

Since graduating from college in 1957, I have lived in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area. 2008 will be remembered by many in Iowa as a year particularly of storms, floods, and multitudinous consequences. One of my main memories of my childhood in New Jersey is also one of a storm, in 1938, when I was three years old.

My parents, older sister (then seven), and I were living in Maplewood, New Jersey, not too far from New York City. Part of September 1938, Mom and Dad were away on a mini-vacation at a beach hotel in Atlantic City. My sister and I were at home, with a caretaker, Mrs. Cook.

Daddy was in the construction business and had built us an impressive little playhouse in the backyard, half hidden behind the garage. We also had a thrilling, giant teeter-totter that he and some others had built from metal and wood and a store bought swing set behind the gardens (almost to the grapevines and back fence.)

Each day I spent hours outside in the backyard, usually alone, as my sister was at school and there were no younger children in our neighborhood to play with. Swings made me “woozy,” but I loved trying to climb on one set of the support poles and its cross bar. I also loved carefully walking up one side of the teeter-totter, very carefully balancing above the center, and then running down the other side. I spent even more hours in the hideaway/school or whatever else I imagine in our playhouse was that day.

The rest of our backyard had both a flower garden and a vegetable garden around which we could run (between the back porch and grapevines.) All of our trees—a spruce, dogwood, and Japanese maple—were in the front yard and I wasn’t supposed to play there near the street. Neither was I to cross the hedges on each side of the yard nor the picket fence in the back, behind which was a city drain ditch, which we called a brook. Even further away was the backyard of the people the next street over.

The day of the storm, I had played out in the backyard a lot. When the storm began, I was already inside the house. It became a wild storm, with more rain and wind than I’d ever seen or heard before, and it became very dark. By evening, it was completely dark because the electricity had gone off.

After a day or so, the storm had blown past and our electricity had been restored. As no electric lines were still down in our area, Mrs. Cook took my sister and me out to see our yard close up. In the front yard, some branches were down and a lot of strange trash was all over.

In the backyard, however, was a tree that had fallen down from the backyard of the people the next street over! A tree I’d hardly even noticed before was now stretched from near the other house, across their backyard, over “the brook,” above our picket fence, and ending up on top of and surrounding our playhouse!

I remember the three of us standing there speechless, looking at the huge elm tree. Mrs. Cook found an opening through the fence and took us toward “the brook.” I think my sister walked across and Mrs. Cook carried me. Then we stood near the half broken and up rooted tree’s base.

Mrs. Cook briefly set me down on part of the trunk and turned to answer some question of my sister. Apparently, I twisted around the corner, stood up, and scampered up the trunk, as on our teeter-totter. Years later, my parents told me the whole story about how Mrs. Cook and my sister were frightened but didn’t want to frighten me into losing my balance. Apparently, they tried to stay underneath the trunk and me to try and catch me if I fell.

Meanwhile, I slowed my scamper, and then crawled until I was atop where the playhouse should be. I called down, “The playhouse seems to be fine!” Before Mrs. Cook could even respond, I monkeyed down between some branches, edged down part of the roof, hung down to a window sill, looked inside, dropped down to the ground, and then wiggled through more branches to reappear outside of our now tree camouflaged playhouse, much to the relief of Mrs. Cook and my sister.

From my point of view, our playhouse was now even more impressive than before and was huge fun! To my joy, it was also a long time before workmen were free to remove our “forest jungle.” Trees not with power lines, roads, or buildings involved were not a priority after the Great Hurricane of 1938.

In 1945, Dad returned from World War II and his job was transferred to Illinois. I didn’t see the Maplewood house again until I went back east as a young adult. The house looked about as I remembered it, the front yard trees were the same but bigger, and the playhouse was still standing.

For part of my childhood, I was not able to see well as I had to wear a patch to cover one of my eyes. A friend once told me he had enjoyed watching ants as a child but I could hardly have seen ants. Another friend spent hours watching birds in his yard but, though bigger than ants, birds moved around too much for me to see them well. I mainly liked trees as a child because they were big and stayed put (except, of course, for “my” elm tree!)
In Illinois, my father taught me how to prune bushes and trees, including how to safely remove the thorns from the lower trunk of locust trees (to protect people’s heads and especially eyes.) I even helped Dad plant some of the trees, bushes, and hundreds of bulbs at our new house. Years later, my husband’s and my wedding reception was in that backyard. And for year, I’ve taught students about trees (and also about birds and ants), but just as much, I’ve planted and taken care of trees.

However, not until the 2008 floods in Cedar Rapids did I particularly question why I especially seem to want to plant trees. I think one reason is because I had subconsciously realized how many losses “my” tree might have meant to others. My gain had been someone’s loss of shade, family history, or birds’ homes etc.

I wonder how the tree’s loss affected the neighborhood drain ditch. Who cut the tree, and where did the wood go? I also was too young at the age of three to realize that my parents were lucky even to live through the storm and eventually return to us.

No longer am I a child with my whole life ahead of me. I am more limited physically than even a few years ago; it’s difficult now for me to walk in the woods where I used to walk almost every day. However, I still want to see the spring native wildflowers and all the daily changes in nature. Alien garlic mustard weed still needs to be pulled, sprayed or burned, if it isn’t to take over our precious few woods.

Will some people of the next generation step forward to take children (and adults) to explore and care for the American Legion woods in Thomas Park in Marion? What is the future for all of our precious places? I can only hope that others have memories similar to mine from “my” elm tree: a joy in the out-of-doors, fun through activity and simply imaginative play. And from later realizations our need to understand and care for our Mother Earth: our soil water, air, plants, and animals.

We need generations of people to help Trees Forever and other organizations with their crucial work. Just as I learned from “my” elm tree at the end of its life, I also hope, somehow, I will have influenced others in some helpful ways. Each of us needs to evaluate our choices and do some part, along with others, to help create a healthier environment for all of us on our Spaceship Earth.