I don't know that I've ever seen another mulberry tree other than that one that stood in the yard across from my bedroom window. The tree had been a part of my life longer than my sisters had been at home with me. It's shade filled the circle of yard surrounded by driveway. I mowed that part of the yard, so I knew the tree well.

Farm hands rested in the shade as Mom cooked the noon meal. It was a place to cool off the sweat gathered by their work in the field. Sometimes the lawn was covered with straw from the bales unloaded from the flatbed wagon onto the elevator taking them to the loft.

The car was always parked beneath the tree in the summer. The old Packard was an oven with heavy fabric interior. So it sat in the shade of the old mulberry tree.
My horse was new to me and the farm. I was going to ride her down the lane to the road. The neighbor boy spooked the horse. She reared and ran toward the barn via the mulberry tree.
"Pam!" Dad yelled. "Duck!"
The big limb brushed my back as we passed beneath it. Had I been sitting I might have been killed.

We missed that old tree after it was gone. The sentry had seen the Loxley girls raised through their childhood. It had cooled an old car and given refreshing shade to the children and farm hands that sat beneath its glossy leaves.
Everyone should have an old mulberry tree in their memories.
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