Autumn is a beautiful time of the year to wander about the city and get familiar with the local trees. I have walked up and down Yuengling Park and round and round Baber Cemetery but my favorite tree is the bonsai in the 800 block of Mahantongo Street.
Bonsai, by the way, is the art of aesthetic miniaturization of trees. The cultivator must then shape the tree as it grows. It is a painstaking labor of love. I have watched this Mahantongo Street tree grow from a small seedling into a magnificent specimen over the years. The technique the owner uses is what is referred to as Ishizuke, which means that the roots of the tree are growing in the cracks and holes of the cement basement entry-way. No container is necessary. Take a look at the photographs and you will see. Some see a gigantic weed, but I see bonsai.
I wanted to know more about this tree and I was told to call City Hall. I was not sure what department would help me. Someone said call the Shade Department. I asked for the Shade Department but all I got was a phoned message telling me that I need to fill out an application and get approval before hanging any Venetian blinds in any part of my house. I called the switchboard and the operator and was told that I needed the Shade Tree Department, not the Shade Department.
After a few more phone calls I connected with the Shade Tree Department but unfortunately the bonsai tree on Mahantongo Street was not listed in its inventory of trees and I could get no further information.
I tried to contact the cultivator at his residence which houses the bonsai, but no one was home. Looking in the window I was amazed at the minimalism I found within the walls. The owner of the home not only practiced the art of bonsai but also decorated the home in a form of Feng Shui – the emptiness before me evoked feelings of peace and harmony. Less is better. To an untrained eye, one would say I was looking at an abandoned house. But I recognized the spareness before my eyes as aesthetic genius. Less is better. That goes for chocolate chip cookies as well as home design.
While standing in front of the building, a passerby told me that what I was admiring was neither bonsai nor feng shui, but only what is referred to in the city as a “pre-parking lot." That is, a building that will eventually become a nice macadam parking lot someday. She told me that “just as caterpillars become butterflies, and tadpoles become frogs, historic buildings become parking lots – it is part of the plan of nature.” I drove around and studied every parking lot and was amazed to discover that every single one of them had been a building at one time. This process of metamorphosis takes many years and sometimes even decades, but eventually the building sheds its skin of bricks and wood and its inner parking lot is unleashed.
A quick walk back up Mahantongo Street led me to spectacular vertical parking lot of St. John the Baptist Church. It is directly south across the street from Yuengling Park. It appears that the lot is being extended up Sharp Mountain; perhaps within my lifetime it will reach the Cressona border. Maybe a ski-lift will be installed to take the parishioners from the top of the lot to the Church and back again.
Someone told me that the city has an ordinance that parking lots should be landscaped and trees planted around. I assume that ordinance was passed to appease the tree-huggers that still remain in the City. Luckily the ordinance does not cover the expansion of current parking lots. The new section of the vertical parking lot is an asphalt masterpiece and any trees would impair its spectacular view of the top of Sharp Mountain.
If you ever stop and admire the asphalt vertical wonder and you still want to see a tree, then skip Yuengling Park and take a walk down the north side of Mahantongo Street and sit with me under the bonsai tree that grows up from the concrete.
