Friday, May. 23, 2008

Tall tales remain in stumps of 'Twin Towers'

The "Twin Towers" of Rose Avenue stood in silent vigil for some 92 years -- two constants in Modesto's ever-changing cityscape.

Long ago, the ranch they once anchored passed into history -- covered over with tract homes and well-manicured lawns and sidewalks and driveways and alleys and curbs and gutters and the other amenities that go along with urban living.

Two redwoods.

Towering relics of a bygone era.

Still, no matter how out of place those magnificent trees might have appeared, no matter how at odds with the modern world that suddenly surrounded them, they gave comfort to Frances Landini.

Her husband, Albert Landini, helped plant them.

The Taylor and Landini families were farmers -- pioneer farmers -- and neighbors back when the last century still was young.

Rose Avenue School, as well as the community park, sit on land once farmed by the Landinis.

"Mr. Taylor brought those trees from Santa Cruz," said Frances Landini. "He asked Albert to help him with the planting. He (Albert) was just 10 years old."

Touching those trees was to touch the past.

So many stories.

So many feelings.

A smile. A laugh. A husband's love.

Though the odds always had been stacked against them, the Twin Towers somehow survived. They weathered creeping urbanization as well as the valley's inhospitable climate.

Coastal redwood trees crave moisture.

They are accustomed to moderate temperatures.

They need rain -- boxcars full of rain.

Here in Modesto, and throughout the Northern San Joaquin Valley, the air is dry. And when measuring rainfall, especially during the torrid summer months, we often use thimbles, never boxcars.

Still, the Twin Towers not only survived, they thrived.

So, no one saw the end coming Saturday.

Landini was getting ready to go the cemetery. It was time to bring fresh flowers to the family crypt, to visit Albert, who died nearly 15 years ago, and other members of her family.

She remembers hearing an awful racket as she prepared to leave her house.

Was someone taking down a tree?

She wasn't prepared for what she saw next -- a city tree crew, slicing and dicing Mr. Taylor's redwoods.

She stopped and tried to talk to members of the tree crew, but they had little information to offer. They had been told to take the trees down and that's what they were doing.

"When I came back from the cemetery," she said, "when I realized what they had done, I thought to myself, 'I'm going to find out what's going on. I'm going to do some research.' "

Despite her best efforts, however, Landini said she received no satisfactory explanation from anyone she talked with in the city's urban forestry division.

So, she placed a call to The Bee.

"Maybe you can find out something," she said. "Maybe they just got tired of (trimming) them."

No, said Bill Dufresne, forestry supervisor, the redwoods were not taken down because the city grew tired of caring for them.

They were diseased.

Basal rot.

Dufresne said the condition weakens the trunk, near the ground.

Long story short -- the giants were in danger of toppling over, without warning. And that, of course, meant potentially serious consequences for the neighborhood -- very serious consequences.

So, the trees had to come down. End of story.

Landini fell silent for a moment.

"OK," she said. "The trees had a problem."

That explanation, however, didn't make her loss any easier to bear.

Her husband, she said, would be heartbroken to learn that the Twin Towers were gone.

"You know, my generation ... we had character," she said. "We cared about our world and each other. We watched out for each other. We helped each other."

Somehow, those two old redwoods had come to represent all that.

Yes, the trees are gone. And the two stumps from which they once rose don't begin to tell the story.

"We've got to do something," Landini said. "They're just stumps, but they've got to be recognized as history. I want people to know the history of what was this place.

"I learned to ride my bike here. I learned to drive a car, right out there on Rose Avenue."

The old ranch houses are gone.

The barns are gone.

The cows, the pigs, the vineyards, the peach orchards -- all long gone.

And now, the Twin Towers of Rose Avenue.

Mike Mooney's column appears every Friday in Local News. He can be reached at mmooney@modbee.com or 578-2384.