Moontree Glows on a Soft Summer Night

Summer School ended yesterday, and only a few weeks remain of the summer; one of those weeks is given over to teacher training, but still and all this is the best part of the year.

On this, *my* first day of summer, the tall ladder is up to trim up the "moontree" -- a drooping acacia with bright yellow flowers this time of year and two-foot long rock-hard been pods that drop onto the wooden deck with a suprising "BANG,clatter clatter" later.

We call it the moontree because it holds the odd shopping-mall-sized spherical light fixture my grandfather retrieved when cleaning up after tenants renting my Great-Grandmother's house years ago.

For a couple of decades at least it hung in the ornamental pear tree outside my grandparents' kitchen and office windows in Pasadena, just at eye level. Lit inside by a single, naked 60 Watt lightbulb, it looked for all the world like a pale full-moon dragged to earth and wedged under the tree canopy. The warm, diffuse light it shed on the iron bench and damp green space below it gave the yard an aura of magic that always suprised me.

My startlement stemmed in part from the fact that my Grandfather was the sort of utilitarian and practical fellow who would (and did) take a saw to an old tiger-maple rolltop desk to remove the roll top and replace it with a sheet of painted plywood, the better to read building plans and blueprints in his trade as a building contactor.

I was at first puzzled and then amused by his frequent derisive comments about the tenants who had been crazy enough to mount it on the 10 foot cieling of their living room. He frequently called it "a piece of old junk" and his regular, nonchalant explaination for its continued presence in the tree decades after he found it was that he put it there to get it out of the way one day and forgot about it.

When Grandfather passed away (Grandmother had gone a little before) and the house was sold, dire rumblings about how to get rid of the moon fixture were heard; aghast I rescued it from oblivion, and when my wife and I moved into our house (also in Pasadena) it quickly took pride of place in our own tree.

(Turns out, by the way, the thing was hardly just "hung there," but carefuly mounted on a 3/8th inch bolt so as to withstand the strongest winds yet leave room for the tree to grow. Wonder how that happened?)

Now, our backyard -- and our tree -- abut a street with relatively heavy foot traffic (and not a few cars). And we often hear comments by people walking by, or are asked about the tree by our students at school, marveling at the "moon." We like it, and its diffuse light sets our yard aglow in the evenings without the harshness of other lights. And we have sort of adopted it as a logo for our homemade and homegrown products.

Although Grandfather Blumer had a decided utilitarian bent, and appeared not to have much in the way of poetry in his soul on first acquiantance, I often like to think of the first Moontree as "Jack's Folly" and proof that everyone can appreciate a little magic now and then.