About 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon the phone rang.
The call was for me.
It was my friend, Brunswick Mayor Bryan Thompson, calling to tell me he was behind my efforts to save the old Live Oak tree trunk (Latin name "Quercus Virginiana") that had been
Take a look at this beautiful, but monsterous piece of wood:
Just to give the tree trunk some scale, here's a photo of four of the local neighborhood boys STANDING side by side on my new piece of firewood...
These young gentlemen are each about ten or twelve years old and at least 5' tall, so you can see that words barely describe my new friend..."Mr. Tree."
It's about 25 feet long, at least 22' diameter at the root base, and the main trunk is about 9 feet in diameter. It's topped off with not two, but three main branches that are over 3 feet each in diameter.
I did a few calculations just for fun, and in my estimation, based on published figures indicating that Oak weighs between 16.5 and 26.0 pounds per cubic foot, this thing weighs between 31,000 and 49,000 pounds.
Is there a Flea Market somewhere that I can drag it off to? Can I have free Charcoal for life or something?
Now comes the hard part...what to DO WITH MY TREE.
I want it to end up in nearly the exact same spot where it came from when the construction interrupted its life. I want it to be carved into a sculpture of people or something (ML King, Sidney Lanier, General Oglethorpe), and most of all I want the final presentation to be dignified--not just another "cheesy" gee whizz type public debacle.
In addition to starting a fund raising drive and soliciting ideas from the community about the theme, I also have to get the tree moved and stored while I complete the design and hire an artist.
When I come up with something, you'll be the first to know.
Now where did I put my really big chain saw...
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