Autumntime-parents-12
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Autumntime
By Anthony Lentini
1971
As you read, make note of the details that support how the narrator reacts to a real tree.
[1] Dad finally broke down and
took us to East Boston Urban Center after Mom had been harping 1 I think he was glad we went after all, because he was smiling quietly all during the trip back.
Dad used to tell me stories about the trees that still
There weren’t very many even then, with the urbanization 2 But you can tell the plastic ones are artificial just from looking at pictures in the microdot library.
"Autumnal Oak" by Mick Garratt is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Mom dialed a light breakfast of toast and synthetic 3 Our expectations were so high that Dad and I didn’t mind it when Mom told us again how the tree was discovered.
Old man O’Brien had no heirs, 4 When local officials arrived for an appraisal, 5 they discovered that the house had a back yard, which is
- Harp (verb) to talk persistently about a particular topic
- Urbanization (noun) the process by which cities are formed and become larger as more and more people begin living and working in central areas
- produced artificially
- someone legally entitled to a person’s property upon that person’s death
- an estimate of what a home is worth
forbidden by zoning restrictions.
[5] By now it had become a favorite spot for school field trips and family excursions such as ours.
An air-cush taxi took us the rest of the way to the residence.
It had none of the marble gloss or steely sheen 6 The rooms were roped off to keep people from touching anything, but there were no windows facing the illegal back yard anyway, so it really didn’t matter that I couldn’t enter the rooms on that side.
The grass didn’t distract me for long, however, because I just couldn’t help noticing the tree!
You could see details more intricate 7 Long ago someone had carved their initials in the bark, and you
It was a fresh, living odor, alien to the antiseptic 8 I didn’t want to go — in fact, I felt almost like crying.
[10] They intend to tear down the place to make room for some kind of insurance building, and the tree will have to go, too.
I think it’s called an acorn.
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- Sheen (noun) a soft shine on a surface
- Intricate (adjective) detailed
- Antiseptic (adjective) extremely neat, sterile, and clean, occasionally to the point of harshness
Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license
Discussion Questions
Be prepared to share your original ideas in a class discussion.
- How would you feel if your children never knew what a tree smelled like?
- Why or why not?
- Why?
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