Old elm's time runs out, but war's losers plug on John Kass
July 31, 2009 I never figured myself for some weepy tree hugger. Not when the village sent the letter about the big elm tree in our front yard, not when the Serbians showed up in the morning. "You feel bad. This I understand," said Bogdan Mijic, 23, whose father, Nedeljko, and Bogdan's younger brothers, Branislav and Borislav, run the County Tree Service in Stickney. "People feel sad," said Bogdan, blond hair cropped short, eyes far too old for a young man in his 20s. "They're sad. You lose something. I understand this." Bogdan lost something too, but of far greater value than a tree. As did his father and his little brothers, and others who work with them, including their cousins and friends like Dusan Skoric, the lean, hawk-faced man with the big mustache, climbing up to the treetops, his saw and straps dangling from a belt. That big elm tree in our front yard was about 70 feet tall and some 90 years old. I called it the Old Man. When we brought our newborn twins home from the hospital on a hot day, the Old Man shaded their faces as we carried the boys from the car. Betty and I figured he'd be there long after we'd been planted ourselves. But I didn't think about the Old Man much -- there is another tree out back where I go alone in the evenings to consider my sins. The Old Man was the public tree out front. Then the village letter arrived, in the impassive and unyielding language of governments everywhere. "Dear Resident: We are notifying you that there is an elm tree on your property which is infected with the Dutch elm disease. ... This, therefore, is an official notice ..." So Betty called around for estimates, and Bogdan's was accepted, though she insisted that if I wrote about this to tell you that there was no deal. There wasn't any deal with the Serbians. It was a fair price, and I paid it and they did excellent work. Unlike others who stopped by to give estimates, the Serbians offered no grief counseling for the homeowners, no offers to put the tree on life support. "The tree is dying. It has to come down," Bogdan said. "It's dead already." A few days later the crew was out front. They'd brought a big crane and a cherry picker, and Dusan the Hawk went up and Nedeljko directed things from the ground. Dusan would strap a huge branch and cut it through. The crane lowered it to the ground where the others would have at it with their chain saws When I learned they were Serbians, I asked if they knew Nemanja Vidic, the great and ferocious center back from the Manchester United <http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/intl/serbia-PLGEO000007.topic> soccer club. "We know of Vidic, but I don't know him personally," Bogdan said. "I played soccer when I was young. I don't play now. I work." Oh, you're young. You're 23. "I work," Bogdan said. His family worked in the lumber industry back home in Croatia. "But then the politics started and the Croatians started killing us, so all the Serbs left the country in one day," Bogdan said. "I was 9 years old. There was a big traffic jam, and they were shooting the people on the road. I was little. We wanted to go someplace safe." Where did you go? "Kosovo," Bogdan said, as more branches of the big tree were lowered to the ground. "We thought we'd be safe in Kosovo." Kosovo was considered Serbia's heart. There are plenty of atrocities to go around, on all sides, but the Serbs were on the losing end with America and <http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/unrest-conflicts-war/defense/nato-ORGOV000049.topic> NATO. The vanquished don't write the histories, and many Serbs feel, rightly, that their stories were ignored. "NATO bombed the hospitals. They bombed the churches on <http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/religion-belief/religious-festivals/easter-12014002.topic> Easter. There are babies who are deaf from the bombings," Bogdan said, in the flat voice of a refugee. "Monasteries were ruined, and people there are still dying from cancers from the bombs that had uranium jackets. It was worse than words can tell you." When did things get better? "When I was 14," Bogdan said. "When we came here to be Americans. Then it got better." One of the workers, a man in his 70s, used a pick ax to pull up old roots running along the surface of the ground. He walked into my backyard and pointed to the tomatoes growing wild in my vegetable garden. "He says you must trim your tomatoes," Branislav translated. "You have too many vines for each plant. The tomatoes will be too small." The old man smiled, and held up three <http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/health/human-body/fingers-HHA000022.topic> fingers. "Three," Branislav translated. "He says three vines for each plant. Understand?" I understand, I said, and held up two fingers and a thumb on my right <http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/health/human-body/hands-HHA000026.topic> hand. As a boy I was taught that mankind was cast out of Eden through the fruit of one tree, and redeemed in part through a cross that was cut from another. But every religion and culture reveres old trees, and feels the loss when one goes, and I think humans have felt this even before religion, before words. Out in the front yard, what remained of the stump was being ground down by an auger. Before long, it was gone. <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-31-jul31,0,2719428,full.column
