The Story Tree

The Story Tree
As told to my granddaughter

When Grandmommie was a little girl she lived on a dairy farm with her daddy, mama, and her two little sisters.

Her daddy was a little girl's perfect daddy. He always had a smile for her, a hug and a kiss too. He loved all children, animals and the earth God gave us to work.

Her mama always had a smile and laughed a lot. She always smiled when we'd fall down and say, "Jump up. Try again. No time for tears let's just keep going!" Her enthusiasm made it easy to find a smile and keep on playing.

Grandmommie loved the farm. She spent hours playing with her cousins and sisters in the green pastures. She would laugh out loud watching the baby calves running, jumping and kicking up their heels. The baby colts seemed to be jealous and would race across the emerald fields just to show off.

Out in the pasture behind the house was a big pond old Gramps, Grandmommie's grandfather, always said was her pond. Cousin Gene would come and go fishing with her and one time they caught two six foot fish stringers full of large bream and white pearch. Grandmommie's daddy even threatened to spank them for telling a lie when they told him they couldn't bring it to the house because it was so heavy.

It was so very funny when Pop, Grandmommie's daddy, and old Gramp followed them back to the pond to find they had been telling the truth and had to bring the truck to put the heavy fish in the back to carry to the house to clean. Gene and Grandmommie will always remember this day! They must have really found Uncle Guy's trick of holding their mouths right today! Uncle Guy always told them they weren't holding their mouths right when they didn't catch any fish.

There were so many places on the farm to play. Grandmommie loved playing in the old barn loft. There were always kittens or baby mice in the hay that smelled so good. She could see the baby calves she fed on a bottle down below and the baby pigs as they squealed and scampered about. Grandmommie loved to walk the rafters of the old barn too. She could walk back and forth across every one before stopping and climbing down. It didn't seem dangerous at all to her.

There was a creek that ran along the long field Pop called "the bottom". Grandmommie and her sisters called it "The Little Mississippi." Grandmommie would spend hours wading in the cool, clear water. She loved watching the baby fish swim along and the frogs jumping along the sides of the water. They would catch gnats and flies to eat. She gathered odd shaped rocks and carried them home. She let her imagination go wild wondering where the stones had come from, how long they had been in the Little Mississippi, who could have touched them besides herself.

There were so many wonderful places to explore and play when she was a little girl. The place she loved the best was the huge old oak tree in the pasture behind the house. It was so tall it almost touched the sky. It's branches reached out in all directions making the largest, coolest place to play in the summer. But that is not what made this old tree Grandmommie's favorite place to be.

This tree was her special place. It was a place she could come to be by herself and think and dream. She had asked old Gramp for a straight backed wooden chair with a cane bottom one morning. He gave it to her asking what she was going to do with it.

"I'm going to take it to my story tree." she told him.

"What is a story tree and where is it?" hes asked.

Grandmommie looked at him like everyone should know where the most wonderful place in the whole world was.

"The big old oak in the pasture by my pond," she told him. " The leaves seem to talk to me and help me make up stories for books. I can't reach the lowest limbs to climb so I need the chair to reach." She could go almost to the end of one of the large limbs and rock up and down like a see saw for hours.

Sitting in the lofty heights of the tree the whole world looked different. This was the best place ever to dream and think. It was the perfect place to carry her favorite books to read. Grandmommie took an empty bread sack and put some pencils crayons and paper in it. She carried this to her old oak tree and carried it up with her.

Every leaf seemed to have a story to give her. Sometimes they made her think of the squirrels that made nests in the tip top of the tree. She could see them looking for acorns underneath the tree and hide them to have food in the winter. Wathcing them helped her know the way they acted. She took out her paper and pencils and wrote a story about two squirrels named Frankie and Johnny.

Another leaf made her think of the way she and her sisters loved to spin around and around until they fell laughing to the ground dizzy. She made up a story about a magical kingdom where children could play all the time and never get dirty or sleepy.

She made up stories about the gypsies she heard old Gramp and some of the neighbors talk about in whispering voices. These stories were scary and always had the gypsies taking a little girl to live the same life they did.

She could see magical shapes in the clouds she saw through the leaves and each one offered up another story waiting to be formed as her pencil moved across the paper.

Grandmommie found she could talk to the old tree when she was sad and it seemed to understand. It was happy when she was happy and always there waiting for her to come snuggle in the crook that seemed to wrap it's limbs around her like Pop's arms did.

The story tree is where Grandmommie could let her mind go. She could write down all the ideas that came to her and make them into stories. It is where she could look at the leaves and find a new story in each one. It is where she first learned how much she loved to write and make up stories.

Grandmommie cried when the story tree was blown down when a hurricane came through one year. Her own children, your Daddy, Aunt Becky, and Uncle Les were already grown then. They loved Grandmommie's stories when they were little too.

The strangest thing though was when the story tree was cut up to be moved they found an old bread sack with a pencil inside one of the old limbs where Grandmommie had left it many years ago. I guess even the story tree wanted to hold on to Grandmommie's passion for writing too.

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