Читать книгу Rover - Barry Blackstone - Страница 16

As a boy in northern Maine during the 1950’s and 1960’s, I lived on my family’s ancestral homestead whose history could be traced back to the year of 1861 and my great-great-great grandfather Hartson. On the front lawn of the original home (the first framed house ever built in Perham, Maine) of that farm once grew a stately elm tree. Whether it was planted there, or was there when the house was built nobody in my family seems to know, but what memories I have of that ancient tree and my dog ‘Rover’.

When I was a child that old elm had reached its zenith in life, probably nearing the grand old age of 150? The roots of that tree were massive reaching well beyond the limit of its shade. Its branches not only gave shade to the lawn, but the Blackstone Road that ran right beside it. Its position on the lawn was the highlight of a circular driveway. I remember mowing the lawn and having to push the lawn mower over the roots that ran above the ground in places. Its trunk could only be hugged if my cousins and I locked hands around it with Rover, paw to tail. Despite its wide base, it soon branched out only a few feet above the ground. This made it easy for me and my cousins to get into its top. It was a great place to hide behind in a game of ‘kick the can’, and it was a great place to defend in a game of ‘war’! It was usually the starting place for the child to count during a game of ‘hide and seek’. Its limbs and its branches provided wonderful places for ambush during a game of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ and ‘Rin Tin Tin’, the part Rover always played!