Father Bernie Burns Down A Tree
by Robert J. Marton
Father Bernie’s walk usually included a stroll down Maple Drive, past the house where he grew up. His newlywed parents had purchased the house in the early 1940’s. He and his brother sold it four years ago after his mother’s death.
He believed this was a Sears Fullerton model built in the 1920’s; he would have to ask Bob Morgan, Mayefield’s expert on the town’s many Sears Roebuck mail order kit homes, to verify that.
This was the only home Bernie knew in Mayefield, other than the rectory at St. Francis, where he now resided.
The old two-story was well maintained by the current owners, a young family with several children. His mother’s rose bushes still thrived in the side garden, and new shrubs were planted in front. The paint was faded a bit, but no worse than the other houses on the block. It was a good, solid house for a family. Bernie was pleased it still served that purpose.
As usual when he passed by, Bernie glanced into the back yard to view the low stump in front of the garage, all that remained of the maple tree his father planted there when they first moved in. Bernie had loved to climb that tree. As a youngster, maybe eight years old, he could only climb past up the main trunk, about six feet off the ground, but he tried and dreamed of reaching greater heights. As he fearfully surveyed the slender upper branches, he envisioned being able to climb up to them and see all the way to his grandmother’s house at the end of the block.
As a child, he prayed for the strength and courage to make that leap. The sisters at St. Francis of AssisiSchool taught that prayer gave you the strength to conquer your fears, so he prayed and waited for divine intervention. None came. Obviously he wasn’t going to overcome his cowardice with God’s help. A miracle was not coming his way.
One cloudy afternoon, he sat on his usual branch, convinced of his lowly fate. Greater heights seemed beyond his reach. He could see into the yard next door, but no farther. Suddenly, his mind seized upon an impulse, and he leaped upward, fully extending his eight year old frame, and somehow grasped onto the elusive branch above. It swayed with his weight, but he managed to hang on and swing his legs around to a sitting position. He had made it. On his own.
Once that obstacle was overcome, Bernie was able to climb further up the tree. The higher he climbed, the more confident he became. Confidence turned to cockiness as the branches became thinner and thinner, and he grabbed each one in turn without fear. He was determined to see his grandmother’s house … and he did – a fleeting glance of its roof just as a thin, high branch snapped off in his hand and he tumbled downward, hitting the hard ground below with a painful thump.
A broken collar bone temporarily ended his climbing days. He was forbidden by his mother from climbing the tree, and he obeyed, at least as long as she was around.
But Bernie remembered the lesson of taking a chance and reaching beyond his grasp. And not depending on miracles.
Burning down the tree a few years later was accidental. He first experimented with smoking cigarettes when he was 14. When no one else was home, he would sneak one of his father’s Pall Malls, shield himself behind the tree trunk, and smoke away. The neighbors probably noticed since he couldn’t disguise the blowing smoke and his own unfiltered cough, but no one complained or told on him. Usually he was very careful to extinguish his cigarette butts and bury them in the dirt. On one October afternoon, he was startled by slamming car doors as his father and mother returned early from a shopping trip, and he quickly put out the butt and ran in the back door to greet his parents as they came in the front.
However, a few embers still burned at the base of the tree, and within an hour, it was enflamed. Luckily the fire was noticed by a neighboring youngster (probably smoking in his own back yard), who alerted the fire department. Bernie watched in fear and fascination as three fire trucks squeezed down the narrow driveway into the back yard, and an army of firemen attacked the blaze with water hoses and axes. Within minutes, his tree was a smoldering stump.
The fire didn’t cause any damage to the house or garage, and it never occurred to his parents to suspect Bernie (the “good son”) of any wrongdoing. His brother Walt was blamed for the fire, especially after the firemen found discarded cigarette butts. Although Walt vehemently denied responsibility, even he wasn’t positive he wasn’t to blame since he too had been smoking out by the tree earlier in the day. Bernie didn’t admit the truth at the time, but a number of years later he told Walt the real story and asked for forgiveness, but by then the tree burning incident was a part of the folklore of Walt’s reckless youth –a badge of honor—so he was more than willing to keep the blame. Besides, Walt had included this “sin” in his confession on the Saturday after it happened, so God had already forgiven it. Why bother to dredge it up again?
Father Bernie continued his walk through Mayefield.