spice drawer mouse: March 2018

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Trees Near Hob Nob Removed (Edited Entry)

From G Street

This winter a tree fell and damaged a house across from Wright Park, across the alley from the Hob Nob Restaurant. The building went up in 1925, the restaurant has been there since 1936. Trees appear in the Hob Nob 1996 photograph in the Tacoma Public Library Buildings Index. These poplar trees were like the grove of a few poplar trees across the street, just up Sixth Avenue a little.

As an undergraduate at the University of Washington in Seattle (1967-1972) I learned the name of Ratatosk, the squirrel, the messenger from the roots of the World Tree to Eagle in the top branches. Scandinavian Mythology and classes in Scandinavian Culture were accessible to me, in English. I also learned some basic Swedish from the Swedish Language classes. At the large park in Helsingfors in 1990 I remember a red squirrel at the roots of a tree, how he dug about. This winter I remember the squirrel who ran up and down the trees behind The Hob Nob Restaurant in their last days.

Tacoma Public Library photo

When I went down the alley beside the Hob Nob to look closer at these trees, trees where the squirrel went along, trees with rope lines attached, I saw they were not alley trees, but back yard trees. I am not sure if the yard belongs to the Hob Nob. Just behind the restaurant, below a flight of down-stairs, there was a vegetable garden patch; closer to the alley, down on the other side of a fence, were the trees.

The last time I passed by I saw the trees are gone now. The remembered Wright Park Poplar Trees are gone too. The park inventory of so many years ago, that could still include those poplar trees, perhaps in the 1990s, remains a part of their planning. Concerned are not only people, but birds, opossums, raccoons, and squirrels.