Faces in the Trees

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett

Last night--our reading done, our hour of streaming done--we lay in bed waiting for Morpheus to arrive. It was early--about 8:15 (I know, I know: dotage)--and the sun had not yet surrendered.

As I lay there (our bedroom is upstairs--in the front of the house), I could see through a front window the branches of our trees--and of a tree across the street.

You probably know that human beings are hard-wired to see faces everywhere--in clouds, in random scrawls on a men's room wall, and, of course, in tree branches. A few years ago there were some configurations in one of our trees that looked, in leafless months, like my face--glasses and all. (Joyce can confirm: She saw it, too.)

But last night, a new one for me. In the top of the tree across the road I saw, very clearly, the head of Davy Crockett, complete with coonskin cap, its tail reaching around his right shoulder a little.

As a kid I loved Davy Crockett when it was on that TV show Disneyland (1954-55), part of their "Frontierland" sequence. I turned ten in 1954, just the right age to play Davy in the little woods--we called it Gibsons' Woods (the Gibsons owned it)--across from our house at 1706 E. Elm Ave. in Enid, Oklahoma.

Kids were carrying Davy Crockett lunch pails to school--wearing coonskin caps and frontier fringed shirts. Not I, though. My parents, both teachers, had no surplus cash to throw away on such things. (Too bad: I could sell them now for a chunk of change on eBay.)

The final episode (at the Alamo) does not actually show Davy die, but he is swinging his rifle like a club as members of Santa Anna's army swarm around him and the theme music swells. I'm sure that was the first time I ever saw a TV hero of mine buy the farm.

I watched those episodes over and over when Disney re-ran them (which was often), and I became addicted to the story of the Alamo--especially the story of Jim Bowie (he of the famous knife; he got his own TV show for a while, The Adventures of Jim Bowie, 1956-58; link to some video--many episodes on YouTube). Gradually, though, I learned the actual histories of these characters (Bowie was a slave-owner and -dealer), and my fondness faded.

As did the tree-image of Crockett last night. A breeze stirred the limbs, and for a moment I saw another face there--the face of Sherlock Holmes, deerstalker hat and all.

Yet another obsession before my eyes. Years ago I read all of the Holmes stories--and have re-read many of them since. I've seen the movies, the various TV series, read many books about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his great creation (Doyle always credited Edgar Poe, whose stories about C. Auguste Dupin set the standard for detective tales). I've even read numerous contemporary novels that employ Holmes. (Here's a link to a list of them supplied by the Seattle Public Library.)

But Davy soon returned to the tree just as the sun was surrendering.

Meanwhile, Joyce and I were singing the theme song from Davy--though we couldn't quite get the third line. But--thanks to Google--here it is: link to the theme song--with that 3rd line: "Raised in the woods so he knew ev'ry tree ...."

And, soon, Morpheus arrived, and darkness fell.