Family Magic :The Painted Dogwood: Love, Mischief, and Memory
The Painted Dogwood
Have you ever gone through an old photo album and found a picture that stopped you in your tracks? One of those snapshots that hits you right in the heart—not with the heavy kind of tears, but the good kind. The kind that sneak up on you because a memory comes rushing back so clear, it’s like you could step right back into it.
Every now and then that happens to me. And when it does, I start thinking about my kids—and grandkids and even someday my great grandkids. I don’t want them to just have their own memories. I want them to have ours. The stories of the family. The grand memories, and the great-grand memories. The kind you only get if somebody tells you—around the dinner table, on the porch, or when an old photo makes its way around and somebody says, “Do you remember…?”
Well, not too long ago, I found a picture of a dogwood tree. Not just any dogwood—our dogwood. And the moment I saw it, I was four years old again.
I was born at Paul Kimble Hospital in Lakewood, New Jersey, but my first home was in Jackson, in a house my great-grandfather had built. My parents moved in after he passed, and I was just two years old. Not long after, Mom found out she was pregnant with my sister, Chrissy—two years younger than me. The house was too small for a growing family. Even after they added a bathroom, there was no way we’d all fit.
So we moved to Lakewood—right across the street from Nana and Pop, and right next door to Mary Lou and George. Mary Lou’s parents were Uncle Ben and Aunt Helen.
Their green-painted house sat in the middle of a big, beautiful yard. No fence yet, just open grass rolling right to the road. And in the front right-hand corner stood a white dogwood tree—about ten feet back from where the fence would one day be.
I don’t remember the move itself, but I remember that tree. At four years old, it seemed enormous. In spring, it would burst into a cloud of white blossoms so thick you could barely see the branches.
Behind Uncle Ben’s house was his shop—a building that had once been a horse stall, now home to “Ben Johnson’s Typewriter Company.” Beyond it lay a little open patch, then a two-acre pasture where horses grazed, with a barn at the far end.
The shop door faced the house, and to the right was a grape trellis heavy with fruit in season. We’d eat grapes until we were full enough to swear off dinner. If you walked behind the shop, you could see the horses.
And then there was the maple. A great old tree, decades old before Ben ever paved around it. The pavement looped all the way around, making the perfect racetrack for bikes and big wheels. In summer, the maple’s thick green canopy covered nearly the whole drive in shade. High up, the branches made a fine perch—if you were tall enough to climb. I wasn’t, not without a ladder.
That maple was also the throne of Tommy, the big orange long-haired cat that belonged to Mary Lou. Tommy had a trick—he hated grooming himself because it gave him hairballs. Instead, he’d lick your hand until it was dripping wet, then rub against you to wipe himself off. Folks thought it was affection. We knew better.
My cousin Mary Lou was always watching out for us—babysitting and playing. She is ten years older than me and ten years younger than my mom. She taught me my times tables and spelling rules and was always around to make sure we did not run out into the road and to make sure I always knew who was who in the family circle… she still does!
We had our own animals, too. Once—before the crazy Dalmatian came along—we had a crow in a cage in the backyard. The crow could talk, and Tommy would sit under the cage for hours, watching. One day we came home, and the crow was dead. Mom and Dad swore Tommy had scared it to death. I believed them.
But the dogwood—now that was the showpiece.
One spring, Uncle Ben decided to paint one whole branch of that white dogwood pink. Not the leaves—just the blossoms. He waited until night, set up ladders, and went at it with spray paint. Somehow, he avoided the leaves enough that from the road, it looked completely natural.
Back then, County Line Road was straight as an arrow, and you could see that tree from far off. This wasn’t a quiet side street—it was the main route from Lakewood to the beach. Drivers would spot that shock of pink against the white, slow down, stop in the middle of traffic, even get out to take a closer look. Some tried to break off clippings, convinced they could grow their own.
Ben had a story for everyone. He claimed he’d grafted a pink dogwood branch onto a white one. He’d mow the lawn when it didn’t even need mowing just so he could be out front telling the tale. And people believed him.
It became a local legend—until 1971, when Ben died young, from a heart problem or maybe pneumonia brought on by it.
That’s when his son George—only a few years older than me and the closest thing I had to a brother—decided to carry on the tradition. But George didn’t just paint one branch.
The next spring, I woke up to see not just pink, but blue, red, yellow—each branch a different color. The blue dogwood stopped traffic completely.
People from the university came to see it. Others parked up the road and snuck back at night to cut branches. With the road so straight, you could see that tree for a long way, and the gawking just got worse. Cars stopped right in the middle of County Line Road while folks clipped “samples.”
It didn’t take long for the township to pay George a visit and tell him to knock it off—it was causing too many traffic problems.
But for a while, it was magic.
I even have a picture from back then—before the fence went up, before George ever tried blue. The dogwood stands in full bloom, its white blossoms interrupted by splashes of pink and yellow, looking almost like it had been painted in a dream.
Every time I look at it, I’m right back there—a little kid in the yard, watching strangers stop in the road just to see our tree. Back then, I didn’t see spray paint cans or ladders. I didn’t know about township warnings or traffic complaints.
I just saw my uncle and cousin making the impossible real.