Stands of trees that stand for something

May 21, 2009

Dear Pat,

Those of us who have been around Cape Girardeau a long time remember when the Town Plaza Shopping Center was a fenced pasture with horses and anything west of Kingshighway seemed like hinterlands. The arrival of the interstate highway in the 1960s began changing all that.

We remember when the huge nightclub across the Mississippi River was the special place to go for dining and dancing to big band music. Now lap dances have the stage.

The main shopping district was downtown. At the Buckner-Ragsdale Department Store your Tuf-Nut jeans came with a free pocketknife. The same building today offers meals, microbrews and music.

Not that Cape Girardeau was completely idyllic in the middle of the 20th century. We embraced prejudice and ethnocentricities. We have had much to overcome, and conflict raged at times. It was possible to dislike where you'd come from. Bob Dylan's song "My Back Pages" recalls the days when life was black and white. "But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

I'm younger than that now, too. Life to me now is gray like my hair, and I know peace is not simply the absence of conflict. It's more about acceptance and allowance.

The fact that landmark buildings are still here is comforting to those of us who grew up with them. Big changes in the landscape can be unsettling.

An injury has kept me from playing golf this spring, but this week I returned to the municipal course of my youth, where I still play. The city is starting to revamp the old course, rerouting some holes and replacing the Bermuda greens with greens that can be played year-round.

Whole stands of trees are gone, reduced to piles of logs on the ground. Some of the missing trees were landmarks to regular golfers. Some were aiming points. The presence of some as you arrived at your drive reassured you you'd hit a good one. Some shaded you on a hot day.

Some trees might be missed more than others. On the first hole, the tree that could quickly bat down an offline drive has vanished. On the 17th hole, the same fate has befallen a whole line of trees golfers had to navigate around.

Over a life, trees and buildings are guideposts. They stand for something, and we don't have to know what. I miss Pfister's, a burger joint that was in a round building on Broadway. The smell of the burgers still roams my brain. Maybe it was the individuality of the round building that impressed me.

The Grauel Building on the university campus was named for an English professor whose charm and erudition made him legendary long before his death. He devoted his life to his love of language and teaching. The Grauel Building stands for something. We do know what.

Once the golf course renovation is complete I know golfers in time will forget where the missing trees were. We'll adopt new landmarks. New golfers, like new residents, won't even know the old landmarks were once there.

New landmarks are always being created. These days our dog Hank likes to lie in the sunshine next to the new garden.

But old landmarks can't be recreated. Gone is gone.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.