A Grand Old Tree

Outside of a church on Marble Hill Road stands a tall, old tree. It has been there for an extremely long time and will hopefully last for longer still. As far as we can make out, it is about 111 years old. We figured this out by measuring around the trunk of the tree and finding the circumference, then calculating the age from that.

Imagine the tree could tell us all the things it has seen in its long, glorious life. Imagine that we could go back to when it was a sapling, and work our way through its history.

Back in 1897, when the tree had just sprouted, the schoolhouse across the road had been established for quite some time. The school’s pupils worked hard and diligently on such subjects as reading, writing, arithmetic, singing, cooking, and crafts.

As the tree grew higher, it watched the children work and play beneath it. The children would play games like marbles, jacks, hopscotch, and tag (I think you probably know all of these). When the children were older, they had their picture taken under the grand old tree. Generations of schoolchildren went past. The children played and worked, and the tree saw it all. But then, in 1945, the schoolhouse closed down. The tree saw that as well, but that was the last interesting thing to happen to the schoolhouse for a long time. Then, in the 1950s, the schoolhouse was converted into a home and has been ever since. Loads of people moved in, and the tree watched. Finally, the house, no longer looking like a schoolhouse, was sold to us. And so we came to live across the road from the grand old tree.