By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Norfolk pines along Pali Highway.
It came upon a midnight clear -- in 1979. A Windward family secretly planted a Norfolk pine on the blank, graded slope of Pali Highway just above the Kailua Drive-In. The anonymous family called it the "Christmas Touch" tree and it had been a potted plant at their house, but it had outgrown both the pot and the house. A Christmas Story
What was too big for the house looked little and lonely on the smoothly graded hillside, a single chalk mark on a blackboard. So, when Christmas came, decorations appeared on the tree. The next year, 52 yellow ribbons appeared, one for each hostage in Iran, and then more holiday decorations.
No one knew who placed the decorations. Newspaper columnists smugly asserted it was "menehunes." At any rate, the lonely little tree with the festive decorations stood out like a candle in the wilderness, a reminder to passersby that people do care, that communities are more than a place to live -- they're places to grow. The tree became an instant tradition in Kailua, and residents became quite fond of it.
Then in 1983 vandals attacked the tree, trashing the decorations and hacking off its limbs. Only the trunk remained.
The community, to put it mildly, was shocked by the casual meanness of the attack.
Amazingly, the tree lived. The next year, it was able to spread new branches. But it had company. Quietly, secretly, more Norfolk pines began appearing on the hillside. The community rallied in an unfocused, inchoate way, but it was a rally nonetheless. The single tree soon had its own tree community around it, providing both security and family.
Today, the hillside continues to be decorated for Christmas. And the hillside contains dozens of trees too big for any one house, but just the right size for a neighborhood.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin.
