Monday, April 13, 2009

Spring on Pacific Street

The house of my childhood was on Paul Roux Street in Bloemfontein. Our house had a high white wall with big, heavy wooden doors set in the middle. My Aunt Judi said recently that they came from the old Bloemfontein Club and that my father had said that he intended walking through them more times than his father walked through them when they offered admittance to the Club.

In spring the peach trees planted along Paul Roux burst into blossom. They were planted fuchsia pink white fuchsia pink white, alternating up and down the length of the street, the flowers like fat carnation pom-poms, double-petalled and perfectly in tune with the late 70's. Cars used to cruise the streets to see them in spring froth. Later the bark, if injured, would drip sweet, crystalline resin.

The Callery Pears have something of the same effect on me in New York.

1 comment:

  1. Lovely memory! The Bradford pears are dropping their petals here...yesterday i drove through an area where they were planted in a median strip and the petals were falling and blowing in the street like large soft snowflakes.

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