Tulsans are mad for Bradford pear trees. Every Spring, thousands of them burst into showy white blossoms all over the city, all at once, as if someone, maybe Barry Fugatt, had blown a dog whistle command.
The other night it rained softly and silently while the city slept. It was the kind of rain that beads up on every blade of new grass. The rain ended before dawn, chased away by strong gusts blowing up from Texas.
A certain Tulsa couple stepped out into brilliant morning light to find all the Bradford pear trees denuded, and their damp pickup plastered over with little round white pear blossom petals, as was every other vehicle in the neighborhood. It looked as if everyone in town had prepared a float for a big parade. They pulled out of their driveway and drove away at parade speed, he waving left and right, and she blowing kisses, at imaginary spectators lining their route out of the neighborhood.
Accelerating onto the Crosstown Expressway they left their petals behind in a dissipating cloud and got down to the business of merging and swerving and looping around downtown, the Tula skyline stamped against an immaculate Osage Blue sky. Cruising down Riverside Drive with the windows down and Jeff Graham & The Painkillers playing loud, the couple silently agreed (as only longtime couples can) that it wasn’t merely great to be alive; it was great to be alive here, in this place, and now, in this moment!
On their right, the Arkansas River, which can be something of a slacker as rivers go, was for once living up to its full potential, filling its wide channel to the brim, racing through the city, overrunning the low dam at 31st Street. At 91st Street, they pulled into Southwood Nursery to by a Holly tree for their yard. Before they made their selection, they stood for a few minutes in the swaying shade of an incongruous spreading Liveoak (not for sale!) in one corner of the nursery, and soaked up borrowed Texas Hill Country ambiance there in the Oklahoma bottomland.
What is it about a tree in the back of a pickup that makes people stare? Even people with a tree in the back of their own pickup will stare at the tree in yours. They pondered this question while sitting in the sun at Weber’s, sipping the finest root beer in the land, until they realized that they were themselves staring at their own tree in the back of their own pickup and they didn’t know why.
They took side streets home, leaving swirling eddies of pear blossom confetti in their wake.
“Did we miss the big parade?” he asked her as they pulled into their driveway.
“No, I don’t think so,” she replied. “I don’t think we missed it at all.”
