The trees on my block are massive live oaks. They are magnificent shade trees and a respite from summer heat. They signal to all who pass that this place has a long history.
People call them “stately.” Their girth suggests permanence in a rapidly changing world.
The oak in my backyard is home to a tribe of squirrels who know time only as a growing pile of acorns.
Its roots are slowly cracking the concrete patio and raising the slabs of pavement at a pace only a big toe understands. I can survey the miniature basins and ranges of my own fault block mountain system from a hammock. It seems like I never see the little changes taking place; I only discover them later while taking out the trash.
Recently, I was surprised to see a photo of the neighborhood taken in the 1920s with only the occasional small oak seedling. My block was a mix of row crops and pasture.
In the years after the Second World War, houses filled the blank spaces on the map and the greatest generation put down roots. The lawns they planted replaced cash crops and pasturage as urbanization buried the rural landscape. They called it the Garden District, and they filled it with azaleas, camellias, magnolias and sweet olive.
My own little corner lot has another history, too. It was once part of a network of fields worked by slaves. People in chains had tilled the earth under my house since sometime in the late 1600s.
Just up the street is the site of a Civil War battle that played a part in the decision to keep or break those chains. Nearby is a cemetery for the fallen soldiers with row upon row of white crosses. No one knows where the slaves who toiled and died over two centuries are buried. People don’t ask. Neither, for that matter, are the resting places marked of the Houma people, who first cleared this land with fire and managed these open meadows for hunting grounds. Legend says they raised a great red stake by the river to signal to the world that this land was their land forever.
The live oaks on my street seem ancient but they are only a small flowering of this place in this time. Their kin were not here when mastodons roamed the beech forests of my neighborhood 18,000 years ago.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who preceded the Houma saw these creatures before they vanished in a haze of glacial silt and prehistory. I wonder if they imagined the river wearing down mountains. I wonder if those distant people knew that time eventually buries everything under muddy sediment and builds tomorrow’s landscape.
A place where someone will come along and stumble on a concrete slab cursing change.
— Babcock lives in Baton Rouge
Advocate readers may submit stories of about 500 words to The Human Condition at features@theadvocate.com. There is no payment, and stories will be edited. Authors should include their city of residence, and, if writing about yourself, a photo.
