Father Bernie Burns Down A Tree<\/b><\/p>\n
by Robert J. Marton<\/p>\n
Father Bernie\u2019s walk usually included a stroll down Maple Drive, past the house where he grew up.\u00a0 His newlywed parents had purchased the house in the early 1940\u2019s.\u00a0 He and his brother sold it four years ago after his mother\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He believed this was a Sears Fullerton model built in the 1920\u2019s; he would have to ask Bob Morgan, Mayefield\u2019s expert on the town\u2019s many Sears Roebuck mail order kit homes, to verify that.<\/p>\n
This was the only home Bernie knew in Mayefield, other than the rectory at St. Francis, where he now resided.<\/p>\n
The old two-story was well maintained by the current owners, a young family with several children.\u00a0 His mother\u2019s rose bushes still thrived in the side garden, and new shrubs were planted in front.\u00a0 The paint was faded a bit, but no worse than the other houses on the block.\u00a0 It was a good, solid house for a family.\u00a0 Bernie was pleased it still served that purpose.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Bernie had loved to climb that tree.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2019s house at the end of the block.<\/p>\n
As a child, he prayed for the strength and courage to make that leap.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 None came. Obviously he wasn\u2019t going to overcome his cowardice with God\u2019s help.\u00a0 A miracle was not coming his way.<\/p>\n
One cloudy afternoon, he sat on his usual branch, convinced of his lowly fate. Greater heights seemed beyond his reach.\u00a0 He could see into the yard next door, but no farther.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It swayed with his weight, but he managed to hang on and swing his legs around to a sitting position.\u00a0 He had made it.\u00a0 On his own.<\/p>\n
Once that obstacle was overcome, Bernie was able to climb further up the tree.\u00a0 The higher he climbed, the more confident he became.\u00a0 Confidence turned to cockiness as the branches became thinner and thinner, and he grabbed each one in turn without fear.\u00a0 He was determined to see his grandmother\u2019s house … and he did \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
A broken collar bone temporarily ended his climbing days.\u00a0 He was forbidden by his mother from climbing the tree, and he obeyed, at least as long as she was around.<\/p>\n
But Bernie remembered the lesson of taking a chance and reaching beyond his grasp.\u00a0 And not depending on miracles.<\/p>\n
Burning down the tree a few years later was accidental.\u00a0 He first experimented with smoking cigarettes when he was 14.\u00a0 When no one else was home, he would sneak one of his father\u2019s Pall Malls, shield himself behind the tree trunk, and smoke away.\u00a0 The neighbors probably noticed since he couldn\u2019t disguise the blowing smoke and his own unfiltered cough, but no one complained or told on him.\u00a0 Usually he was very careful to extinguish his cigarette butts and bury them in the dirt.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
However, a few embers still burned at the base of the tree, and within an hour, it was enflamed.\u00a0 Luckily the fire was noticed by a neighboring youngster (probably smoking in his own back yard), who alerted the fire department.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Within minutes, his tree was a smoldering stump.<\/p>\n
The fire didn\u2019t cause any damage to the house or garage, and it never occurred to his parents to suspect Bernie (the \u201cgood son\u201d) of any wrongdoing.\u00a0 His brother Walt was blamed for the fire, especially after the firemen found discarded cigarette butts. Although Walt vehemently denied responsibility, even he wasn\u2019t positive he wasn\u2019t to blame since he too had been smoking out by the tree earlier in the day.\u00a0 Bernie didn\u2019t 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\u2019s reckless youth \u2013a badge of honor\u2014so he was more than willing to keep the blame.\u00a0 Besides, Walt had included this \u201csin\u201d in his confession on the Saturday after it happened, so God had already forgiven it.\u00a0 Why bother to dredge it up again?<\/p>\n
Father Bernie continued his walk through Mayefield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Father Bernie Burns Down A Tree by Robert J. Marton Father Bernie\u2019s walk usually included a stroll down Maple Drive, past the house where he grew up.\u00a0 His newlywed parents had purchased the house in the early 1940\u2019s.\u00a0 He and his brother sold it four years ago after his mother\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}