December 2002 - January 2003 Edition

A Day in the Life of a Palm Tree   By Jeanne Baratta I confess. I was the keeper of the now famous palm tree on Fair Lawn Avenue. I am not that political a person, but I do not deny having a bit of a wicked sense of humor. To understand why I agreed to this political stunt, I must supply you with some background. I have been a bit vocal about my feelings about our town's current system of government, feeling that it is time for a change from a one-party council. That said I received a call from Mr. Hyde, who was running for a spot on our town's council, asking if I would be receptive to placing an election sign on my lawn. I immediately agreed. What I forgot to do was to run it by my loving and supportive husband. He was not too thrilled with my decision, and I admitted that I should have discussed the matter with him before agreeing, but what was done was done. The sign arrived over the weekend, and a couple of days later so did the town's tax assessor! Now I am certain that this was just a coincidence, but how ironic that the tax assessor shows up to assess an addition I put on around 6 years ago, two days after I put up a political sign for the competition? The assessor explained that my 6-year-old addition had just "fallen through the cracks". Hey, things happen! A little over a week later I received my over $300.00 a year rise in taxes. Needless to say, my husband was not too happy with this, and blamed it on my little purple sign. My husband called the town's assessor, who by the way is a lovely man, and he assured him that it was just an oversight, and had no political meaning whatsoever. The Friday before Election Day I received a call from Mr. Hyde, telling me about an inflatable palm tree he had purchased. Without his asking, I knew exactly where he wanted to plant that tree, on my front lawn! Right off the bat I wanted to tell him yes, but after the sign incident, I thought it best to run this by my husband, (did I mention he is loving and supportive?). Note: for those of you who are not familiar with this issue; a quick explanation is in order. Our previous borough manager ordered some fake palm trees for Memorial Pool, without going through the proper channels. When some town watchdogs got wind of this, it became a bit of an issue. The council told the manager to return the trees, but the company would not take them back without a new buyer. So, we were stuck with storing the trees and some hefty freight charges to boot. Back to my tale… I called my husband, (I am leaving out his name to protect the innocent), who was at work, and told him of Mr. Hyde's request, asking him to think about it and let me know later in the day. Saying I was shocked when he agreed would be an understatement. The tree and its sign of explanation arrived early Monday morning, just in time for my 16 year old to have to stand outside and wait for the school bus.  If any of you have a 16-year-old daughter, well I don't have to tell you how dramatic they can be. She wasn't going outside, she wasn't standing next to that "thing", how could I do this to her! I told her to "just go to school before I make you wear a grass skirt and stand out there all day". It turned out that the tree was the talk of the bus and my daughter spent the ride to school talking politics with other self-involved teenagers. I have written before about how hard it is to get out of my driveway, how hard to cross Fair Lawn Avenue with cars speeding along, well for two days my problems were solved!  Traffic significantly slowed down, at times almost to a standstill.  Heck, forget about those little yield signs, let's put palm trees up every 50 yards or so! And so, I became the "keeper of the tree". The climax came when I received an email telling me that my tree made the front page of the Official Site of the Borough of Fair Lawn! I felt like a proud parent. The tree must have made some waves for the acting manager to put up an explanation regarding the infamous palm tree purchase, right there on the Borough's web site. Alas, my story must end on a sad note. As we all now know, Mr. Hyde did not win the election, although he certainly made it interesting and we hope to hear from him again. We all wish nothing but the best of luck to Mr. Weinstein , and hope he will serve our town well. As for the palm tree, well I still have that, I may string some lights on it and put it out with the Christmas decorations.