Down South

Alovely shade tree, I played beneath its canopy. It stood just beyond an old hand-dug well. I sucked nectar from delicate tubes in yellow-green tangles of fragrant honeysuckle just beyond the tree.

Little did I know Mom and Dad considered that perfumed vine a pest. They tried and tried to get rid of it. Nothing worked until Granddad brought in goats. They chewed it right to the ground and into oblivion.

Circa 1956, unlike today’s digital-dependent kids, I lived in a green world of trees, vines, and grass. And of all the trees in my boyhood, that shade tree, an old chinaberry, looms large.

Now, lo and behold, I hear it’s a pest.

Like a bank robber in the Old West, it’s wanted. Bug-wood Blog of the University of Georgia’s Center for Invasive Species requests we report chinaberries’ location.

Times sure do change; once upon a time Southerners rolled out the welcome mat for chinaberries. I discussed this with one of my readers, Dreamcatcher, and days later she sent me this message:

“Every old Southern homeplace boasted at least one chinaberry tree. But like most old Southern cultures it has been erased from our history.

“Why? The answer is surprising. We are mandated by our government to not only be tolerant of but to embrace cultures and ideas that differ from ours.

“Yet our government dictates that plant species that are not native to our area are inherently evil and must be eradicated.

“Life in the backwoods was tough to say the least. Everything had a purpose. The chinaberry tree, aka poor man’s shade tree, aka umbrella tree, was very important to a working farm. It provided shade around the homesite.

“The leaves were used in the dog pen to prevent fleas. The pulp in the berry was used to make a healing salve for sores on cattle. Berries were fed to hogs to prevent worms. The ladies of the house would string the berry seed to make jewelry. You, my sweet chinaberry tree, worked hard for us in the backwoods but now you must die. Such is progress.”

Dreamcatcher offers a warning: “Look out honeybees. You were imported from Europe. The Native Americans called you ‘White man flies.’ Who knows, you may be next to be considered evil. You just never know what the powers [at] be decide.”

She makes a point. We set standards for other living things but they don’t apply to us.

But what about that nettlesome chinaberry? How did it get here?

From southeastern China it came through the ports of Charleston and Savannah where it commenced to spread across the South.

Our notorious summers made it a hero. Long before air conditioning, people valued chinaberries for their shade.

As for being eradicated, chinaberries are still out there. Drought tolerant, pest and disease resistant, and fast growing, it’s hung in there.

That’s a different matter. No longer is it “exotic;” it’s invasive. Like some smeared politician, it lost its support. What really turned public opinion against the chinaberry was the flick of a switch. Air conditioning.

Why sit beneath a tree when newfangled machines filled with Freon chill the air? Farewell chinaberry. You gave us homemade necklaces and never needed fossil fuels.

I still see that chinaberry. It stood where a cyclone fence edges a cascading water feature where koi once idled time away and where honeysuckle once tangled up our yard. “Once” is the key word. Lot of changes since 1956. Got city water now. The old hand-dug well is capped off.

Circa 1961 a windstorm gust blew out the china-berry’s top; split it asunder. Men cut it down. The fragrant honeysuckle is no more, goat-gone. That big chinaberry that ruled the sky is long gone but its ghostly memories tell me something.

Chances are my childhood home was once the site of an old homeplace. Maybe that’s why my parents chose to build there in the first place - good shade.