In July 1971 I turned six years old. That year was filled with a lot of changes for me. One was moving to a new house. For the first time I entered the old Burl Warwick farmhouse, which my father had just rented from Jack Warwick.
I have a picture made years later by Jack’s daughter Connie Buckner of the east elevation of that house. I still remember, though I was so young, how I felt the first time our car pulled up between the two box elder trees on that side of the house. Immediately I felt this was the right place for me. Perhaps it was because the house we’d just moved from had no trees in the yard at all.
I remember Jack Warwick telling me that when he was young he used to “chin” himself on a certain branch of one of the box elders, which he pointed out. For a brief instant, I thought, “How’d he ever get up there to “chin” on that tree?” I realized, of course, the tree was younger and shorter when Jack was a boy.
I spent many days and evenings playing under those trees. I can remember family outings and many of the cars parked under those trees during the years we lived there.
One thing I remember about those trees is comical. I was getting to the age where my fears of “things that go bump in the night” were diminishing. Imagine my horror when I found a wrinkled creature dead underneath the largest box elder tree!
I went screaming into the house, where Mother was cooking supper, “I’ve found a dead monster!” Mother thought I was crazy, so I practically dragged her out into the yard to see what I saw.
It turned out to be a dead baby bird. I’d never seen a bird without feathers before, and the poor bony thing looked treacherous as it lay there dead, exactly like some evil creature on The Twilight Zone or Star Trek. I next did what any young Christian boy should do—I buried the baby bird in the soft dirt floor of the woodshed.
There was yet another tree on the Warwick property. It was a gigantic oak tree at the fork where the old spring branch joined Bull Run Creek. I once visited Jack and we talked about the oak. I still have in the back of an old math book that calculations that Jack did to determine the circumference, diameter and radius of that tree.
I frequently pass that wonderful property we once rented and so enjoyed. The house burned years ago, and both the box elders and the old oak tree are gone. But they will forever live in my memory.
The Maynardville community lost another tree during the school system’s fall break this year. Many former students will remember the huge elm tree that shaded the Maynardville Elementary playground for most likely a century.
It seems that probably in 2025 that some dead branches had to be trimmed from the tree. This year, the tree began its descent into death, and for the safety of the children who presently were favored to play under the old elm, the tree had to be cut.
I talked with the gentlemen who were tasked with removing the tree. From their best estimate, the tree was probably around 123 years old. If correct, that means the tree began its life in 1903. This would be haven twenty years before the original Horace Maynard High School was constructed in 1923. The steps to the 1923 Horace Maynard HS still exist on Main Street, now leading up to the war memorials, the oldest of which stood directly centered in front of the doors to the original HMHS. The building served as both high school and elementary school at its inception. It ceased service as a high school when the new HMHS opened in 1950, but continued to serve as Maynardville Elementary School until the new MES was constructed in 1960. The building was demolished during the 1960s, as those who remember tell that it came to be in a sad state of repair.
Only God Himself can know how many students played under that wonderful old elm tree during the century it shaded school property. I remember when I played at MES that the tree was tall enough that we tried to swing high enough to touch the lower branches and leaves with our feet.
Many grieved the loss of the tree. One of Union County’s current teachers told me she received her first proposal under that tree—when she was in kindergarten! I believe she chased her suitor away! (Amazing how wise kindergarten girls can be!)
The historic tree was loved enough to make it to Facebook. Many expressed their feelings about the loss of the tree and shared memories of its heyday and meaning to their lives. Childhood is sweeter to those of us who shared our friendships and joys with schoolmates ‘neath the old elm tree.
There is hope for the new generations. Still on the MES playground is a pin oak. The pin oak has many years before it will come close to rivaling its recently departed elm neighbor, but if our ancestors could talk, they would tell of a time they played around a much smaller elm tree.
All that’s left now of the once beautiful elm tree is its stump. Even a stump has a use, as Shel Silverstein so beautifully wrote in one of his best loved books, The Giving Tree.

"I am sorry," sighed the tree.
"I wish that I could give you something....
but I have nothing left.
I am just an old stump.
I am sorry...."
"I don't need very much now," said the boy.
"just a quiet place to sit and rest.
I am very tired."
"Well," said the tree, straightening
herself up as much as she could,
"well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting
Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest."
And the boy did.
And the tree was happy.

(Source: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8538991-The-Giving-Tree-by-Shel-Silverstein Retrieved October 26, 2026)

Thank you, Dear Friend, for the memories.

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground;
Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.
--Job 14: 7-9 (KJV)

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 97
How do you know you’re over fifty? (ANSWER: You have upstairs ibuprofen and downstairs ibuprofen.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 97
What’s another way you know you are over fifty? (See the next “Mincey’s Musings” in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)