(Something more interesting for you, while the council debates wording of its Focus Area Documents – “public” safety vs. “community” safety vs. “Focus Area Two”):
Those readers interested in the sidewalk v. trees issue from Park Road (story here, editorial here) might enjoy this 1952 exchange of letters between Ray Warren, executive director, Greensboro Housing Authority, and H.L. Medford, Greensboro director of public works.
In a March 18, 1952 letter, Warren asks that a huge oak tree on Florida Street not be removed for a sidewalk. His letter uses some effusive prose, ends with Joyce Kilmer’s ode to trees: “I think that I shall never see,” etc. etc.
Medford, in a March 21, 1952, response, uses even more florid prose (“The poet, drunk with the goodness of nature, nature as moulded by the hand of God with no adulterations of mimicing man …”) and concludes with a parody of the famous Kilmer poem:
I think that I shall never see
A tree where a tree shouldn’t be;
A tree whose hungry roots are pressed
Into the sewer, choking its breast.
A tree that drops its leaves all day
and clogs all drains unless we pray,
A tree that may in summer tear
A block of street and cause grey hair
Its branches on the street are lain,
They must be removed in torrents of rain;
It heaves the walk day by day
An accident occurs: the City must pay!
Nobody loves a tree like me
but I like a tree where a tree should be.
And, Medford’s letter concludes: “In other words, Ray, I still think the tree should be removed.”
Two immediate observations:
1. I don’t think city bureaucrats today write as well, or as poetically.
2. I’m glad municipal public works officials today aren’t quite so anti-tree as to think none belong in a city!