Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
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We had a good-sized elm tree in our backyard on West 5th Street when I was a kid. Its branches rose well above our two-story house. Bill Porter and I climbed all over that tree. When we got near the top, we had a great birds-eye view of the whole neighborhood. We could even see Bert Sawyer’s tree house over on Fourth Street.
Marysville was full of elm trees like that. I remember a picture postcard the Oakland Hotel offered to its customers. The caption on the card said, “Marysville … The Shaded City.” The photograph was a view of West 5th Street, which was lined with elm trees. They formed a canopy over the entire street.
The biggest tree in town was a giant elm that stood in the Blair and Dorothy Curry family’s front yard, diagonally across the street from our house, at the corner of Fifth and Maple Streets, where Chase Bank stands today. It towered above the Curry house and shaded their entire lawn. Its trunk was massive, and the limbs at the top of the tree were as large as many of the elm trees in town.
Now fast forward to a day in late May of 1955 when Marysville was hit by a severe storm. The wind and rain were ferocious, and it was too much for that giant elm tree. A huge limb, almost as big as the entire tree in our back yard, came crashing down on the Curry house. It went through the roof and into an upstairs bedroom. It fell directly onto the bed, driving it through the floor and into the room below.
Mrs. Curry and her daughter were both at home, but luckily they were in another part of the house, which was not damaged. So they were unhurt. They were two lucky people to have been in the undamaged area.
But I think they were even luckier that the storm didn’t hit at night when one of them was sleeping in that bed. I don’t even like to think about that.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com