Big Oak
by Don Draughon - August 2011 - Tallahassee, Florida
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This tree is located on a wooded lot behind Hopkins Eatery and the new Seineyard Seafood Restaurant in the Lake Ella Plaza. When I was a young boy in the early 1950’s, my friends and I played in this tree. It was really in the woods back then as was just about everything north of this point in Tallahassee. I always thought this was the biggest oak tree in the world. When I went back as an adult and took this picture a few years ago I realized that, while it is a big tree, it’s far from being the biggest. I was amazed to find the long steel cable we use to swing on almost sixty years ago still attached to one of the upper limbs. We would tie a burlap sack filled with Spanish moss to the end of this cable and swing out from the tree straddling this bag. On the return swing another kid would jump on in a maneuver we called nipping the bag. Sometimes too many kids nipped the bag and the one on the bottom, or the bag itself would give out and everyone came crashing down. The tree is situated on a hillside that slopes down towards Lake Ella and at the apex of the swing you were really high off the ground. A limb almost as big around as the trunk extended from the tree just off of the ground. We lined up on top of this limb to wait our turn to swing. This limb is missing now but you can still see the stub of it on the side of the tree. If this tree could talk, I’m sure it would have a lot of stories to tell, especially about the good times the neighborhood kids had all those years ago. If you go there now you will most likely find a “No Trespassing” sign on the property. It was there sixty years ago too, which just added to the excitement. |
Other web sites by Don you might want to visit:
Catamaran Sailing at Shell Point
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