So the huge Norway spruce at the junction of Abbey Road and Bellows Lane will be taken down and replaced by a sapling. A lightning strike last summer did the old tree in. Some good things don't last forever.

I remember when that tree was planted, some time in 1932. It was about eight feet tall and very big at the time, since I was then only about three feet tall. The following winter the Christmas tradition began at the base of the tree of Santa handing out gifts to the children of Munsey Park. Munsey Park was smaller then. East of Manhasset Woods Road, there were no roads between Park Avenue and Bonnie Heights Road. It was all fallow farm fields or woods. In Munsey Park, the developed area to the east ended at Revere Road and Remington Road, which was a dead end before it reached what is now Hunt Lane. Park Avenue continued through open fields to Port Washington Boulevard. Copley Pond was a water hole on the golf course. Pollywog Pond was deep in the woods. Fields lay between Revere Road and the golf course's western edge. What fun it was to roam freely through all that countryside.

Munsey Park School was a farmhouse big enough for two or three grades. The building was about where the old auditorium is now. From the end of Abbey Road, at Revere Road, we walked through sumac groves to get to school. The kids made their own path. Another old house, long abandoned and owned by the school, was located on Northern Boulevard near where the new ball field backstop is today. About 1936, Rex Cate, then the high school athletic director, refurbished it and moved in.

The old tree has seen a lot of changes in 70 years. It's done. Now it's time for a new tree, new growth, new ideas and new memories. Things don't remain the same, no matter how we try to preserve the status quo. Let's shape the inevitable changes to be positive ones.

Paul Early