Sweetgum Wars

I have not Googled to find out the range of the native Sweetgum tree in the United States, but I suspect it is generally restricted to the South. Up north they have snowball fights; out West they chunk dirt clods and in California they sign petitions, I suppose. Here in the Southeast all it takes is rubber tubing and a mess of sweetgum balls for fierce childhood wars to be fought all summer long.

Such wars are not restricted to childhood. I have witnessed my share of dull but elegant fund-raisers interrupted by a shower of sweetgum balls, surreptitiously tossed by bored guests during the course of the evening. I have noted the friendly faux baseball pitching demonstrations by folks in the park. I have never gone so far as to buy a house with a yard full of sweetgum trees with an eye toward eventually launching said sweetgum balls in a battle royal, but Earnest Duffer is a man of vision.

Well, maybe he did not actually buy the house with that specific activity in mind, and I doubt his wife had any such notion in mind either. But the day Earnest Duffer, the oldest veteran in the city of Clem, the Pearl of the Tri-Pasture Area, moved into the grand old house on Baxter Street was the happiest day of his life. There in his big back yard was not one, not two but SIX sweetgum trees. He was one of those boys who fought imaginary Civil War battles over and over with his childhood friends in a simpler time, before World War II stripped him of the impractical remnants of his childhood. Those youthful sweetgum battles were fond memories he liked to think about often.

Now Miss Alma Duffer was not so pleased with all those sweetgums; she liked the fall leaves they made but she also liked a neat yard. She hated mowing over a nice patch of grass only to have "those damned burr balls" as she called them, sitting there like eyesores on her otherwise neatly groomed lawn. This is no problem, Earnest Duffer assured his wife. I shall rake the yard faithfully and rid you of them. It will be good exercise, he insisted, so she decided to let him do it. She busied herself with tending the azaleas, trimming the hedges, and chasing pesky squirrels from her bird feeders.

Earnest turned eighty-four the year that Miss Alma discovered to her horror that he did not throw out or destroy all those sweetgum burrs. Instead, she found them squirreled away inside a big plastic drum in the work shed. Miss Alma feared that Earnest was losing his mind and becoming a hoarder, just like Miss Dovie Thomas who used to save every single newspaper and advertising circular she received, and ended up with a house fire. Miss Alma struggled with whether or not she should talk to Earnest's doctor about this. After all, who in his right mind saved sweetgum balls?

The morning she decided she would have to speak to someone about it, she went to the back door to tell Earnest she was going out for a while. She did not go anywhere as it turned out. There by the work shed stood Earnest with a slingshot made of carved wood and rubber tubing. He was firing sweetgum balls at squirrels that persisted in getting into his wife's bird feeders. He was a pretty good shot, too.

She went out the door to him, relieved he was not losing his mind. He had just primed his weapon for another launch at a squirrel, and the noise of the backdoor made him spin around, startled. His fingers slipped and the burr ball sailed over and landed a scant five feet from the startled Alma Duffer. She said, "I'm going to get you for that, Old Man."

"I'd like to see you try, Old Woman," Earnest challenged in his quivery but determined voice. She walked out to the fifty-five-gallon drum, gingerly scooped up a handful of the burr balls, and pelted him with them. Earnest did not wish to use unfair firepower on his own wife, so he stuck the slingshot into his back pocket and got a handful of sweetgum balls, and the fight was on.

You never saw a sweeter pair of old folks having the time of their lives, tossing sweetgum balls at each other and laughing like little kids. She impulsively gathered a big scoop of them up in her sweater and he grabbed up a dog dish for his share. She tucked behind the big wooden swing glider he built, and he used a turned-over flowerbed as a foxhole. When they ran low on ammo, each braved a hale of sweetgum balls to re-arm themselves with more nature-provided ammunition. They returned to their respective posts and continued the battle.

The neighbors poked their heads out of windows and back doorways, and no one could tell whether the Duffers had lost their minds or were having a knock-down drag-out fight. Eventually one brave soul ventured out to the fence and called to the couple, "Is everything all right?"

"No, she's beating the tar out of me," Earnest replied with a giggle. Old men who giggle like Earnest are a special breed and should be cloned immediately.

As with all wars, soon the battle exhausted them, and they retired inside to sip tea and chuckle over their war. Earnest Duffer continues to gather up sweetgum balls, and every now and then he and Miss Alma fight a Sweetgum War. They invite their grandchildren to play every once in a while, but I think they like to keep it a private war, with tea served later at the détente.

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