The Forrest Gump of reforestation…

Some years ago, my wife I were in Nebraska visiting her family farm when we decided to take a detour to Nebraska City, where Arbor Day was started in 1872. We visited the Arbor Lodge State Historical Park and Mansion and got on the mailing list or the Arbor Day Foundation. Every year, we receive multiple mailings for the organization, which has as its goal the planting of trees throughout the nation.

The idea for Arbor Day was started by J. Sterling Morton, who was a newspaper editor living in Nebraska City. He had a great fondness and appreciation for trees and proposed establishing a day when citizens of the State of Nebraska should go out and plant trees. It is estimated that on the first Arbor Day of April 10, 1872, more than 1 million trees were planted in the state of Nebraska alone.

The event was declared a state holiday by the governor of Nebraska in 1885, and the date was set for April 22. Over the years, other states began celebrating Arbor Day and it is now celebrated in all 50 states, most of them observing the last Friday in April as the official date.

Morton’s oldest son, Joy, had founded the Morton Salt Company in Chicago (yes that Morton salt that you have in your pantry), but continued his father’s passion for planting trees and looked to his father’s roots (pardon the pun) in Nebraska.

He acquired a piece of property just west of Nebraska city and then built a mansion on the site that he called “Thornhill.” By 1921, the work of transforming the property into an arboretum, or an outdoor museum of trees, became a meaningful pursuit for Joy’s later years, furthering his family’s tree-planting legacy as a supplement to his business success.

I mention all of this because we recently received yet another mailing from the Arbor Day Foundation, which we have continued to support. Here’s the website:

https://www.arborday.org/

The mailing prompted me to me think of an embarrassing experience I had with trees when I was marketing manager for Wells Fargo many years ago.

I regularly organized campaigns that offered incentives for customers who signed up for credit cards or other bank services. We gave away gas cards, soccer balls, baseballs and other such low-cost items to customers who signed up.

I guess I was feeling a bit guilty about some of the cheesy incentives we offered and thought we should take a bold step toward supporting the environment. I came up with the idea of offering a live pine tree for anyone who would sign up for a credit card (that they probably didn’t need. ) Like J. Sterling Morton, I envisioned hundreds of new pine trees being planted around New Mexico and helping save the environment as a result of my brilliant marketing scheme.

I did research and identified a company which could provide us with hundreds of five-inch pine trees to give away as a customer incentive. I was certain that displaying them in the lobbies of our bank branches was sure to drum up business. I envisioned a lobby with pine-scented air and looking like a 70s era fern bar. I saw customers flocking to the outdoors to plant the trees.

Below is what I thought we would be getting — a small ponderosa pine about five or six inches tall growing in a small pot:

When the shipment was due to arrive, I cleared out large space in the mail room at our main office to make room for what I thought would be an overwhelming shipment of small potted pine trees. I told branch managers to borrow their spouses’ pickups to be able to haul large numbers of the trees from the main office to their bank locations in preparation for the promotion.

When the shipment finally arrived, it came in six medium-sized boxes. Inside was this:

There were only emaciated sprigs of bare-root pine trees wrapped in some moisture encasing mush and wrapped in plastic.

Needless to say, I was mortified and embarrassed. I sheepishly distributed them to the branch managers who had brought their giant four-wheel-drive pickups to haul them back to their offices. Then I apologized profusely to everyone in sight. knowing I would henceforth be known as the “Tree Teaser.” Or maybe the Forrest Gump of reforestation.

I suspect none of these ever got planted, and if they did, I’m sure they all died. So much for saving the planet.