Rubes by Leigh Rubin for April 24, 2023

Wooden you know it, the boy’s board with the history lesson.

Histree

There’s nothing like researching your family tree.

When does he get to the part that his ancestors died to make that book?

“I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree.”

After New England was settled, much of the British ships were built with New England trees. It was the first great trade good of the Americas before tobacco and rice. (Cotton did not become king until the invention of the cotton gin. Furs were big for the French.)

So the log cabins and the ships were frequently built with American trees after the initial colonies.

Yep you’re quite committed

Some just kind of lumber along.

This must be elementree school.

I see the kid and his father, but where’s Ms. Tree? It’s a great unknown.

When the sapling asked what part they might play in the nation’s history, the teacher was stumped.

Some of our relatives are in Brooklyn.

And they left hundreds of thousands of our ancestors’ stumps in the ground…

But Dad I’m board!

It is said that when the European colonisers first came ashore a squirrel could start in Massachusetts and reach the Pacific coast jumping from tree to tree and not touch ground. It might have to detour into what is now northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan and Alberta before reaching Puget Sound, but it could make the trip.

And don’t forget the pages of this book…

Don’t forget that you’ll also serve as the inspiration for street names after you’re all chopped down to make room for endless, unchecked sprawl.

As for the other branch of the family. they’re just toothpicks.