A Tree’s Life At McDonald’s — Billions and Billions Served

by | Jul 1, 2018 | Donald J Claxton

A Tree’s Life At McDonald’s — Billions and Billions Served

My local McDonald’s has murdered two huge trees–one because a branch fell on a car. The other, is guilt by association. I took pictures of the carnage in yesterday’s post. Today I counted the rings of one of the trees and then compared the McDonald’s service history to the growth of the tree.

Do you know how many customers it took McDonald’s to serve for that tree and its accomplice to reach their lofty heights? As long as it took for McDonald’s to serve “Billions and Billions.” As long as it took for McDonald’s to quit saying how many billions of customers they have served.

From my counting of the rings, the tree sprouted in 1965. McDonald’s served 1 billion customers that year.

The timeline of McDonald's Billions and Billions served vs. how long it took for this tree to grow--they're almost the same.

The timeline of McDonald’s Billions and Billions served vs. how long it took for this tree to grow–they’re almost the same.

In 1970, the tree was five years old, and McDonald’s had served 5 billion people. By then, almost the number of people on the planet.

In 1980, 50 billion were served by McDonald’s and the trees kept rising toward the heavens.

In 1990, 80 billion were served, and you can see the enormous growth of the tree.

In 1994, McDonald’s reached their 100 billion served mark and stopped counting.

But to be fair, somewhere around 1995 or so, the tree caught up to that 1 billion it’d missed out on–McDonald’s had reached 1 billion by 1963, two years before it began growing.

Then came the new millennium.

Then add the spring of 2018 when a branch fell on a car in the parking lot of McDonald’s in Mesquite, Texas.

After providing shade to customers at the east end of the parking lot of this store, a branch fell from a healthy tree. One of two tall trees standing majestically on the lot separating it and a dry cleaner.

Men showed up one day with a wood chipper. One of the operators looked like he didn’t know what he was doing like he’d lose an arm himself in the contraption.

Two weeks later, the two trees, after McDonald’s had served an untold number more customers, the beautiful, green crowns of the trees were gone. All that remained were the mutilated trunks of the trees, lying there like dead bodies one might see in old Civil War photos.  And remaining next to them, their stumps, which tell the story above.

McDonald’s murdered these two trees because a branch fell on a car. Both living, vivacious and healthy trees that had grown up with the franchise and served the environment of Mesquite, Texas, like McDonald’s has served people around the world.

But one branch fell and that was enough for McDonald’s to kill two trees. Two healthy trees.

The Overstory

In Richard Powers’ novel, The Overstory, a character goes and counts the rings of a fallen tree just as I have done. He does it because he, too, is sickened that people so carelessly murdered a tree. At least in the case of the story, the tree was harvested for the wood it would yield. In this case, the tree was chopped up. There is a nice mulch bed, but the rest was mutilated it appears. A total waste of 50 or more years of growth from two trees because someone was too lazy to do a little maintenance on two trees, provide some shade, and keep two viable, living trees in the ground.

The Overstory is a great book about the life of trees. Reading it has changed my perspective about trees. Had I not read it, I’m not sure I’d be this upset about what McDonald’s has done. But I am sickened by what McDonald’s has done because it was nothing short of murder. As they say in the book, trees are part of us. And part of all of us died when McDonald’s murdered these two trees the way they did.

The Rings Tell The Story

Here’s the tree rings.

The rings of one of the trees murdered by McDonald's in Mesquite, Texas because a branch fell on a car.

The rings of one of the trees murdered by McDonald’s in Mesquite, Texas because a branch fell on a car.

 

 

My Local McDonald’s Murdered Two Trees

by | Jun 30, 2018 | Donald J Claxton

My Local McDonald’s Murdered Two Trees

Last week I finished reading Richard Powers’ The Overstory and it has changed my view about trees, forever. This morning, I took clothes to my dry cleaners at the corner of Belt Line Road and Cartwright in Mesquite, Texas. Actually, they’re not on the corner, a McDonald’s is. Last week, when I was dropping off clothes, I observed two guys who looked like they were determined to cut off their arms shoving in a branch into a tree mulcher. Today I returned to find that two viable, huge trees that were at least 40-50 feet tall had been cremated and cut to shreds.

McDonalds Trees

What remains of two huge trees McDonald’s MURDERED after a branch fell on a car parked in their lot.

I was in shock. The trees had full crowns of green shady leaves. When I asked the girl at the dry cleaners what had happened, she said a branch fell on a car.

I went into the McDonald’s, which I seldom do, and the checkout girl said the same thing. “It was a mess,” she said.

So instead of trimming heavier branches on the tree where the branch fell on the car, THEY CUT THE WHOLE TREE DOWN AND CUT A SECOND ONE JUST LIKE IT DOWN, too.

The Corporate Line

Now I get corporate liability and the canned answer McDonald’s will offer. if they respond at all.

“We cut the tree to ensure the safety of our customers, our first priority next to good, healthy food. The safest thing for us to do was to remove the two trees.”

That’s a lot of bunk. And it appears to be the line that’s been sold. A branch fell on a car, more could fall on other cars, we can’t have that.

The ‘Every Tree Is Entitled to One Branch Falling’ Legal Theory

I guess they were using the theory that every tree was entitled to one branch falling, like every dog is entitled to one free bite.

But these were two HEALTHY trees. Two trees with HUGE crowns, and they were healthy. In all likelihood, the one branch that feel got whipped around in a recent strong wind and fell.

Maybe McDonald’s could have done more to trim over-extended branches.

McDonald's Trees

The trunks of two trees McDonald’s MURDERED because a branch fell on a car in their lot.

But instead, my local McDonald’s murdered two trees.

MURDERED.

What’s worse, is they clearly didn’t do anything with the actual wood from the tree except cut it up.

Pictures are included of what’s left of the trunks.

The day the men started shredding that branch, I had no idea they were going to cut the whole tree down, let alone BOTH trees. There was absolutely no visible reason for them to do so.

THE OVERSTORY

Now I do not regard myself a tree hugger, no not one bit, but I know waste when I see it and this was an abomination. This was a crime against nature. You want to get all uppity about what kind of beef vendors use and whether they’re using GMOs or letting the cows roam free, I don’t give a hoot about that nonsense.

But Richard Powers’ book, The Overstory, changed my view of the world of trees and made me more sensitive when a corporation like McDonald’s does a dumbass thing like cut down two viable trees. No, murders, them and wastes their resources because a branch fell on a car.

McDonald’s. This was wrong. It’s going to take years to replace what you did. YEARS. I understand the liability and minuscule payout your insurance has taken because a branch fell on a car. In the scheme of things, it doesn’t equal out to killing two healthy trees. It just does not.

 

The Overstory by Richard Powers–Book Review

by | Jun 28, 2018 | Book Reviews from My Book List, Novel Writing

The Overstory will change your view of trees. 

The Overstory by Richard Powers has me looking at trees in a whole new light.

This 501-page novel is a wonderful, enchanting, and true work of art.

Move this book out from under the overstory of your “To Be Read” pile as soon as you may.

The roots of my love of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Yosemite’s trees go deep.

Between my love affair for the woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Mariposa Grove of Yosemite, (really all the trees of Yosemite) I have long had a thing for trees.

This appreciation expanded when my Great Pyrenees, Maycee, and I returned to the woods of the UP, in 2022.

The roots of this book run even deeper. 

The book is divided like a tree, into sections–root, trunk, crown, and seeds.

At first, I wondered where the vignettes were going, then in the trunk I began to smile with glee. Things began to make a lot of sense and the magic of storytelling really began to unfold.

The Overstory by Richard Powers is a beautiful book and one of the best-written works I have ever read.

The Overstory by Richard Powers is a beautiful book and one of the best-written works I have ever read.

Without trees, we all die; or maybe not.

The Overstory reminds us that trees are critical to the future of our sustainability. But the author makes this happen without pushing us out the door under the direction to go outside and hug a tree.

Environmentalists rant and rave about how killing the trees is killing the planet.

What Powers writes suggests is that when we do away with what is keeping us alive as humans things will still rejuvenate. Yes, trees and forests; the things that have been around for millions of years, long before us. 

Stories

There are inspiring quotes in this book; piercing lines that are true to heart.

“And what do good stories do? … They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren’t.” pg 412

Amen to that.

This is what reading this book did to me.

At the novel’s end, my heart felt somewhat sickened.

Perhaps this is evidence of the grieving I felt.

Unsettled anger builds from reading what happens to the characters.

The crutch of the argument so-called climate change experts miss about sustainability. 

Apologies to you if you are of the ilk who run around with the words “climate change” vomiting from your lips. 

I do not buy into the nonsense that human beings are capable of destroying the earth the way “science,” says we are doing. As the late Rush Limbaugh used to say often, “They had to quit calling it ‘global warming‘ because temperatures quit rising.” 

Maybe something of an exaggeration, but seldom do I ever buy into the nonsense that spews from the mainstream news agenda and lack of bias in, well, I refuse to call it reporting. But that’s all for another day. 

“Noah took all the animals two by two, and loaded them aboard his escape craft for evacuation. But it’s a funny thing: He left the plants to die. He failed to take the one thing he needed to rebuild life on land, and concentrated on saving the freeloaders!” pg 451

Nearly every society worldwide has some version of the great flood in its history.

In 2012, I recruited a team to work with North and South American archaeoastronomers to create an interactive book for the iPad.

One thing the four primary scholars who wrote books discounting the end of times meme all pointed out is that almost every independent society on the planet has an accounting of a great deluge in its history.

Powers is clearly a science guy.

I don’t know how spiritual he is.

Doesn’t matter.

What’s clear is this: given what Noah didn’t do, things worked out well regardless.

Trees and other fauna have a power we do not understand. Plants, roaches, and Keith Richards, as they say, will survive us all and adapt to this world despite what we do.

Jumping into the briar patch. 

“The year’s clocks are off by a month or two.” pg 452

He dabbles in the climate change, and global warming argument here.

“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” pg 488

Richard Powers presents some great arguments in this book by telling a masterful story.

The only issue with sharing this book with others.

The problem with spreading this tale is that the book is more than 500 pages.

In the days when a website filled with emoji text and a lack of intellectual proses, few will read something that long.

But for those who do read and keep reading, I promise, you are in for a treat.

Will I ever read The Overstory again?

I loved The Overstory. Someday, I want to read it once more.

UPDATED in June 2023: Now, instead of reading a tome like The Overstory about trees, I’m spending long periods of time in the woods of Upper Michigan. My world is often full of various sorts of maple, pine, and oak trees.

From saplings barely an inch in diameter to ones I cannot wrap my arms all the way around. I’m learning about how to manage the forest of 40 acres my father bought in 1975  for pennies.

There’s also more to a forest than the trees and that’s what I love most. While I am living off-grid, I’m plugged into the living world around me. And it’s more alive than many of the people I know stuck in urban and suburban environments and feeling loathe they cannot stomach for much longer.

Powers’ writing is rich and colorful.

When characters spend 10 months on a platform in a great redwood out west living 20 stories above the forest floor, you feel like you’re doing the same.

His writing is superb.

I highly recommend this book.

I just wonder, if the intent was to move people to action, if it had to be so long.

But as a fellow writer, don’t know where I could or would cut a single thing.

The writing is poetry and the story’s worth telling from beginning to end.

 

Novel Writing: Finding an Agent 

by | Jun 22, 2018 | Novel Writing

Three Rejection Letters – Finding an Agent

Yesterday I received three rejection letters for my novel, The Voodoo Hill Explorer Club. One of them I took pretty hard. I’d pitched the agent at the recent DFWCon in early June and had really hoped she’d rep me. 

In her rejection letter, she said, “This story has all the elements I love—an interesting premise and a well-built world. The writing is solid with a nice voice. A dynamic, interesting protagonist.” She concluded by saying she didn’t feel the love she needed to sell the story. 

The two others were more to the point. 

Voodoo and Explorer.

The intersection of Voodoo Avenue and Explorer Street, KI Sawyer AFB, Michigan.

“I’m afraid this doesn’t seem like the right project for me, but I’m sure other agents will feel differently.” 

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m not the right agent for this project. I wish you much luck in getting THE VOODOO HILL EXPLORER CLUB published.”

I still have several queries out and there are other agents who have asked for pages, so all is not lost. 

I am early in the query process. Just a few months in, and in that time, my query has improved. 

Because of what the first agent I mentioned taught me at DFWCon, my query letter is now a mere NINE sentences. It’s tighter, to the point. It targets what is important to the structure of the story and I don’t get into the subplots and things that might confuse a slush-pile gatekeeper in New York deciding whether to read more or not. Since DFWCon I’ve also gone through the book and cut 10,000 words. If it was not about four boys in the woods building a treehouse near a Russian spy, it went. Period. My inciting incident is in the first 25 pages. Boom. 

I learned these important things from the agent who said my story has the elements she loves. 

For that I am grateful and a thank you letter, I send them typed on my 1948 Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter, will say that. She’s like that high school English teacher we all had. The one who was the hardest on us. In the end, the one who taught us the most, and not just about literature but life itself. 

Finding an agent is like asking a pretty girl to dance in middle school. You know so little about her. You’re nervous. You think you know how to dance. You’re worried about your blemishes, if your hair is straight, pants and shirt are fashionable, if she will say “yes.” Whether she will fall in love with you just the same. The odds seem so remote and extreme. On one hand, it seems like the best thing to do is sit on the bleachers and watch the cooler kids dance. But at the same time, you know you can dance. You’ve been watching yourself in the mirror for weeks, months, years. And you’ve gotten better and better and better. It’s time to be under the disco ball at center court with a pretty girl.

I am a good writer and I have a solid book and I will get published. I know I will. 

I didn’t meet my match yesterday, but there is always today. There is always tomorrow. And I have more books to write. I have two other books already written needing revision.

What I learned yesterday is that I am looking for LOVE. I want to hear a reply that says, “I LOVE YOUR BOOK.” Hedging, doubt, all of that, won’t do. I very much respect and enjoyed the agent who wrote me. I will keep her as a friend. But there wasn’t a spark. There are others to dance with. There must be love or the result will not be good in the end.

And thank goodness, I have other writer friends I have talked with overnight who are in the same boat, beating on against the current….

My current query/pitch: 

THE VOODOO HILL EXPLORER CLUB

In 1977, four teen boys, led by KIRK CARSON, build a tree house near the secret hideaway of a Russian spy. The historical commercial fiction work is 88,000 words.

Kirk is fighting his own Cold War among friends, a bully, and himself. He tries to type “I’m trying to change my life,” but instead his typewriter clacks out, “I’m trying to change my lie.” He wishes he could use white out on the whole year.

How Kirk handles the ultimate test of a December blizzard in Upper Michigan and the Russian spy who has been trying to scare them all out of the woods means life or death for his friends.

THE VOODOO HILL EXPLORER CLUB is a nostalgic reminder of an America where kids played outside until their mothers signaled a summer’s day’s end by turning on the porch light.

I have written in journalism and public relations, and for governors and school superintendents for more than 30 years. Since 2014, I’ve been part of Southern Methodist University’s Writer’s Path program. 

Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, and F. Scott Fitzgerald–Book Review

by | Jun 4, 2018 | Book Reviews from My Book List

Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, and F. Scott Fitzgerald in One Week

Last week my reading list included Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, A Farewell to Arms! I also read The Torrents of Spring. The third book was one of Hadley Richardson-Hemingway’s favorites by Henry James, The Figure in the Carpet; and last, the incomplete novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon.

Now I am reading Papa’s The Sun Also Rises.

A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms is a lovely book. A simple love story about a wounded soldier. An American in Italy during World War I who fell in love with a British nurse. He met her before getting wounded, and then, once wounded, their affair really takes off. The book is semi autobiographical. Hemingway really got hurt and really fell for a nurse. But once he returned stateside, she broke it off. Papa intended to marry the woman, even with their ages several years apart. The well-composed story is a must read for any Hemingway fan. Plus, many regard the book as great American literature.

The Torrents of Spring

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms book cover.

Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms is still a wonderful read in 2018.

The Torrents of Spring took an afternoon to read. This is a book Hemingway wrote in a few weeks and is a satirical attack on Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter. I will tell you, it is much easier to read than Dark Laughter. In part, the point. Anderson uses a lot of lofty language difficult to follow. I’m about 70 pages into Dark Laughter and have wandered down the Mississippi River with its main character, and I honestly don’t know where we are going. The Torrents of Spring makes fun of the Anderson book; however, I am certain I missed half of the ways. Maybe more.

The Figure in the Carpet

Henry James’ The Figure in the Carpet is an interesting read. A critic has written a review of a famous author’s book and when presented to the author, he says he does not read reviews. But he reads this one and tells the critic that he has a theme that runs through all of his works, but the critic has missed it. The critic begs for the author to part with this secret and he tells him to look further. This sets the critic on a mad chase of discovery.

He has two friends join in this quest. One of the two says he has figured out the mystery. But before he can reveal the secret to the critic, he dies in a car wreck. But the deceased shared the secret with the other. Yet she says she will not part with the secret. She marries and passes away later. The critic befriends the widower and approaches him about the secret well after the woman has passed. The widower takes offense upon learning his wife never shared this secret with him. Will the critic ever figure it out?

The Last Tycoon

The Last Tycoon is an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel written in the writer’s late 30s early slash 40s. Fitzgerald suffered a heart attack at age 41. He never finished the book. Yet reading what is complete serves as a reminder of his storytelling gift. The gift that worked best when not under the spell and distractions of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. Maybe she will haunt me for saying such, but one does not exaggerate by saying the world lost out on many a grand novel by the distractions she brought into his life. By keeping Fitzgerald from writing once they married, the fame, fortune, and flappers consumed them.

I enjoyed the book and the fact that Fitzgerald never finished telling the story is poetic.