On A Bet: The Tale Of Gingko

We sit around the Algonquin Round Table of our hamlet, and we do Truth or Dare for money to while away the hours of late autumn, preparing for the absolute doldrums of the winter. Vito demonstrated various "pig latins" of his native land: anima amoris = asa nisi masa, asa moso risi... and that gets old in a hurry, even among those interested in languages.
So it was bet that I could not tell a story of the tree that stood outside my home. ...

"It was a gingko tree that had shed its leaves, and it looked pretty forlorn - like all the other homeless trees we have given refuge to...

I looked around the table. Their eyes - still puffy from the holiday - were beginning to focus on me...

They come in droves. Nomads, actually, from the north; some on their annual migration, some fleeing the scourge of the emerald Ash Borers. Some are educated, some are hunters and gatherers, some are those that grow things. They all have something to offer.

Walls have been erected to forbid this immigration, but they uproot the wall and push it over, or they bore beneath it, or cast seedling to the wind - which sweep along with impudent laughter as they brush the ears of the befuddled officers of the " Law and Wal " - as it says on their uniforms and badges with the absolute authority of a government that dares you to criticize its spelling, a government of absolute anagram authoritarianism!

Anyhow, the gingko; its name wasn't originally "gingko": that was a nickname given by his future father-in-law, the sire of the sweet gum tree he was engaged to. It was a toss up between "Gingko" and "Gizmo" and "Gim-gammy" for a long time. Over time, the name "Gingko" won out over the others.

The migration of trees surprised him. He was one of the trees at our condo community, standing outside my living room window. He was quite solitary, the next nearest tree specimen being 30 feet away across a no-man's land of strictly trimmed lawn and bushes under Army Code of Law, so strictly cut and shaped since seedlinghood, that they cowered in their time-out corner along the brick walls of the gitmo guard towers that were our front porches..." (to be continued)

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