When a Tree Was Homecoming Queen in East Hampton

When my daughter was a junior at East Hampton High School, she asked if my car and I could be part of the homecoming parade the school was holding that year.

At that time, I was driving a 20-year-old Buick Skylark convertible. Long and low, it had wonderful lines and was already considered a classic of its kind.

“I am part of the Queen’s Court,” she said. “There are five of us all together: Four members of the court and the Homecoming Queen. We sit high up on where the car top comes down behind the back seat. Two girls on one side, two on the other. The queen in the middle. We’ll smile and wave to everybody.”

At the appropriate time, I got in the line of the parade at its starting point parked by the curb on Newtown Lane. It was a brisk November day and the leaves swirled around in the breeze. At the front was the high school marching band. Behind the band were the floats, four of them, each built by a different high school class. At the back was the Homecoming Queen. The girls climbed aboard. A whistle at the front sounded, and we were off.

Driving slowly, I looked out my front windshield and saw the fourth float, a flatbed truck decked out as a tribute to The Flintstones. A big palm tree dominated. Around it were shells, sand and kids dressed as cavemen carrying clubs and dancing happily as a loudspeaker very obnoxiously played “We’re The Flintstones Yabba-Dabba-Doo!” over and over.

I’d occasionally look back at the girls sitting high up on the back seat. Smiling and waving, they wore ballgowns, crowns and long white gloves. Royalty bringing up the rear behind the savagery. My daughter was prettiest of all, of course.

The parade moved very slowly up toward Long Lane and soon, after two turns, the high school came into view. Beyond the high school up the hill was the football field, the bleachers full of people already cheering and applauding. The game had already started.

My first thought was that the parade might wind up in the end zone to the cheers of the crowd, but it didn’t. Instead, coming up the high school’s driveway, it turned and went behind the school. What was this? The parade came to a halt amidst big dumpsters by a back door entrance to the school. A teacher there with a bullhorn instructed the kids to take everything down and throw the decorations into the dumpsters. However, the kids, seeing the game, were too excited to do this properly. I watched as they just threw everything overboard, then, still wearing their costumes, raced off. The the lady with the bullhorn followed, shouting.

Now, there I was, alone, silently sitting at the wheel amidst the tangle of crepe paper and other embellishments.

Then, I noticed this big jungle tree, too big to fit in the dumpster. It was just left there lying sideways atop it, its leaves over one end and its pot sticking out the other.

Left there to die. Well, I thought, I should save this tree. My car was about the same length as the tree. I hopped out of the car, picked the tree off the dumpster, turned, and then heaved it heavily atop the car. Its pot hung over the passenger door by the windshield. Its leaves hung over beyond the trunk.

Climbing into the driver’s seat, I silently told the tree it was safe. I drove it back out onto Long Lane and down onto Newtown Lane in the center of town.

I was an ambulance driver. No siren, though. But if I took it slow, which I did, I’d find a plant hospital. Behind me, far behind, cymbals crashed and the crowd roared. Probably a touchdown, I thought.

At this time, I knew every merchant in town because, with a pack of contracts and forms, I’d been selling newspaper advertising in my paper door to door every day for years. And so I came to the hospital, the East End florist shop directly across from the supermarket on Newtown Lane.

I pulled up in front and ran inside. The owner was there, a woman named Jeanette. She was about to wait on a customer, but I cut that short.

“I have an emergency,” I told them. We all walked quickly outside — Jen, the customer and I. And there it was.

“It’s a corn plant,” Jen said.

“Can you save it?” I asked.

“Let me look.” She walked around the car. She examined the leaves. “They’re split,” she said. “It’s been into a wind.” I told her where that plant had been.

“I’ll take her in,” she continued. “I think she’ll be fine. I’ll feed her. The splits will heal.”

“Really?”

“Take a month.”

The three of us gently carried the plant inside. Part of that florist shop had a cathedral ceiling. We stood her up along its wall.

“How much is this going to cost?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Jen said. “It’s on me.”

For the next 20 years, this plant stood happily in a big clay pot in a corner of our living room where the ceiling was 12 feet high. There, it could provide shade for the sofa when the sun was right.

Our cleaning woman, Mary, who came once a week, knew how to feed her. The plant thrived. One day five years later, the plant sprouted a giant growth the size of a pineapple halfway up. It stank up the house for about a week. Then fell off. It was, I think, trying to mate.

Also during this time, the plant grew new roots. And at one point, to make room in the pot, we cut away the plant’s original shoots. And it made me wonder. Was what I rescued still there? Still grateful for what I had done? How long is its memory anyway? Or was this the son-of-rescued plant?

After 20 years of the plant stinking up the house for a week every five years, my wife, eager to refresh the living room, asked if I would allow the plant to continue on somewhere else.

Reluctantly, I gave it to a neighbor.

I presume it is still there today. And I think about it. Should I have initially just set this plant free? Planted her in the wild?

Maybe.