Palm Believer

All summer long I cussed the palm tree by my front door. it's a Queen Palm, an old, tall one, and first it tormented me with its blossoms. This year, come flowering time, it sprouted three stalks; and when I walked outside to get the paper in the morning the sidewalk would be covered with white-yellow petals

that stuck to my feet, and I would track them back inside and create the sort of mess that my wife should not see before she's had her coffee. This went on for weeks.

Then came the fruit-orangey dates that dropped down on unwitting skulls like gooey grenades. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, which attracted thousands and thousands of flies, and this went on for weeks, too.

Then came the hurricanes. When they were gone the palm tree was left leaning at a 45-degree angle. Next stop-my roof.

"I can yank it out, no problem," said a tree guy who was driving through our neighborhood and spotted it. Then he asked for a thousand bucks. The palm tree stayed where it was.

Which is as it should be. No matter how much I cuss the palm tree, I could not bring myself to get rid of it. For there is something about a palm tree, even an annoying Tower-of-Pisa one, that so attaches me to life here that getting rid of one would diminish an earthy connection with home.

When I first came to the Gulfshore, fresh out of college and looking for a job, a kid from the northern part of this peninsula, where palm trees do not so lasciviously grow, I entered Fort Myers from LaBelle on Palm Beach Boulevard and kept following it as it became McGregor, all the way out to the beach, along that wondrous corridor of royal palms first planted courtesy of Thomas Edison. I had never seen such trees in all my young life; and their presence was so exotic, so romantic, so narcotic, that I think it was those palm trees as much as the opportunity for a steady paycheck that prompted me to move here. Next thing I knew I had fallen in love and gotten married and conspired to bring two sons into this world. I can't attribute all that to palm trees, but I can't discount it, either.

If you step back and consider a palm tree, it really is something foolish and whimsical, a plant designed by Dr. Seuss. It gives us little of what we need most here-shade, precious shade. And it harbors lots of what we need least here-all kinds of bugs and vermin. Beyond that, virtually none of the varieties of palm trees that grow here are native to the Gulfshore. They are exotics, brought in from somewhere else. As are we all, I suppose.

The other day I treated myself to a quick visit to one of my favorite places for admiring palm trees, the little palm garden near the yacht basin in downtown Fort Myers that was first planted by the Fort Myers Garden Club back in 1955. It has palm trees from all over the world-a towering talipot palm from India, a Bismark palm from Indonesia, all kinds of palms from Cuba and Madagascar and the Canary Islands. I sat down on a bench and read the newspaper and came across a story out of Iraq about how the war had wreaked havoc on that country's date palm trees, which are treasured by Iraqis. Where not all that long ago there were 33 million date palms in Iraq, now there are only some 13 million.

The story quoted a verse from the Koran in which the Prophet Muhammad said: "There is among trees one that is pre-eminently blessed, and that is the palm tree."

Far be it from me to insult any flavor of prophet. When I got home, I found some thick rope and tied off the palm tree by my front door. No way it's coming down.