A family tree grows tall and proud

There is a cluster of banana trees growing in the Mulberry Community Garden on New Street in downtown Macon.

They congregate in the corner nearest to where the sun comes up every morning. You can’t miss them. They have grown tall in the months since they were put there, towering above the other fruits and vegetables.

They have flourished on the slope of the steep hill. They have been content to live in the raised beds among the collards, turnips and peppers.

I did not plant them. I have never worked my hands in the soil beneath them. I have never watered them. Until a few weeks ago, I never knew they were there.

But I feel a kinship with these trees. Our roots run deep. After all, my father planted their great-great-great-great-granddaddy more than 50 years ago.

It truly is a family tree. Oh, if those broad, green leaves could talk.

Many of you remember my dad. His name was Jennings Melvin Grisamore. He never cared much for Jennings or Melvin, so everyone called him “Gris.’’

That’s what folks now call me. But he was the original “True Gris.’’

He was a farm boy from the Midwest, and he was always sticking his green thumb in the dirt. He loved to piddle in the yard and tend to his garden.

Growing up, I was his appointed hole-digger. Whenever I would get in too big of a hurry, and my shovel didn’t go deep enough or wide enough, he would say, “Never put a 10-dollar tree in a 10-cent hole.’’

That was the greatest advice I’ve ever received about always doing your best. In 2011, it became the title of a book I dedicated to him.

My father died 10 years ago this week, two days after his 82nd birthday. He came into the world on Oct. 31, 1924, a few minutes before midnight. But my grandmother did not want her youngest child born on Halloween night. She convinced the country doctor, who had arrived by horse and buggy, to record my father’s birthday as Nov. 1 on his birth certificate.

When people are grieving over the loss of a loved one, I tell them how I find a way to honor my dad every day. It may be remembering something he said or did. Or how he saved many lives in the medical profession.

Today, I will pay tribute to his legacy by telling the story of the banana trees.

One summer in the 1960s, our family went to Panama City Beach on vacation. On our way home, my father stopped at a nursery in north Florida and bought a small banana tree.

My mother was not happy. With five kids in the back of a station wagon, where was he going to put it? But he stuffed it in, took it home and planted in our backyard in LaGrange.

In 1966, he re-enlisted in the Navy as a physician and we moved to Portsmouth, Virginia. Knowing the banana tree might not survive the colder winters ahead, my father entrusted it to my maternal grandfather, W. E. Richards. He taught agriculture at Hawkinsville High School. He had a greenhouse at his home, so he was an excellent caretaker over the next three years.

My father returned after a year as a doctor in Vietnam, and we were transferred to the Jacksonville (Florida) Naval Air Station on the banks of the St. Johns River. We were reunited with the tree, and it followed us to Atlanta when he retired from the Navy and went into private practice.

In Atlanta, my dad mostly kept it in the glass greenhouse I helped him build, and it thrived. It grew so tall the leaves would sometimes poke through the vents at the top.

When my parents became empty-nesters, they moved to Macon in 2002. They bought a small house in Stanislaus, and my dad found a place for his beloved banana tree in a flower bed beneath his bedroom window in the front.

I always thought it was a little out of place there, a few feet from a beautiful Yoshino cherry tree and on a picturesque street lined with century-old oaks. But it continued to grow, even after he died and my mother eventually moved to a retirement community.

I took an offshoot from the tree and planted it in my side yard. My brother, Charles, did the same at his house in Peachtree City. His tree has even produced some small fruit, sometimes known as “monkey” bananas. My sister, Susie, keeps another of the banana siblings in the sun room of her home in Woodbridge, Virginia.

We now rent out the house in Stanislaus. A neighbor, Jack Head, hired some men through the Macon Outreach program at Mulberry Methodist to take care of the yard for our family.

Earlier this year, Jack asked the men dig up part of the tree and move it to Mulberry Community Garden, which he helped start six years ago. About 10 families have plots in the 30 raised beds. Some 75 percent of the food grown in the garden goes to the Macon Outreach food ministry for the homeless and less fortunate.

Imagine that, my father’s banana trees growing on a patch of ground surrounded by streets named after other trees — Walnut, Mulberry, Cherry and Magnolia.

Although my father was not an arborist, he planted hundreds of trees in his lifetime so that future generations might enjoy them.

That banana tree was perhaps his signature tree, regenerated across the years and miles. I am reminded of a scripture from Deuteronomy that says we drink from wells we did not dig and sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.

Late Wednesday afternoon, I went downtown to see the banana trees. A couple were at least 12-15 feet tall. Jack said they produce new leaves almost every day.

It was an emotional experience. I could have irrigated the corner of the garden with my tears.

When I left, I went a block up the hill to the corner of Spring and Walnut to order a Cuban sandwich from the 3 Countries Restaurant. The lady at the counter asked if I wanted French fries or plantains.

“Most people get the plantains,’’ she said.

It had been a long time since I had plantains, or even thought about fried bananas.

Never try to tell me things don’t happen for a reason.

This story was originally published October 28, 2016 at 2:44 PM with the headline "A family tree grows tall and proud."