'George Washington and the Cherry Tree' as told by Nanny Piggins

When Derrick learns about George Washington at school, Nanny Piggins tells him what really happened according to the first hand account of her Great Great Great Great Great Aunt Anna Piggins. Spoiler alert - this story also reveals what really happened to make the Venus De Milo lose her arms.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to bedtime stories with me R.A. Spratt 

Before we begin I just want to remind you all that the book based on this podcast called Shockingly Good Stories goes on sale on July 2nd 2021. It features 20 of the stories I’ve told here as well as some of my story reading tips and words of wisdom. You can pre-order it from your local bookstore or favourite online seller now.  

Also there will be a book launch to celebrate it’s release at Gleebooks in Sydney on July 8th at 10am. I’ll be doing a live record of the podcast as well as answering questions and signing books. I’d love to see you all there. You can contact the store to rsvp. I’ll be posting more details on social media and my website raspratt.com in the next few days.

Today’s story is the history of ‘George Washington and the Cherry Tree’ as told by Nanny Piggins.

Here we go…

‘Did you learn anything at school today?’ Nanny Piggins asked conversationally as she met the children from the bus.

‘We learned about the lifecycle of a frog,’ said Michael.

‘Masters of disguise, frogs,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘First one thing, then another. You’d never see it coming if they didn’t warn you about it at school.’

‘We learned what a semicolon is,’ said Samantha.

‘Really,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Is it true it’s got nothing to do with the lower intestine?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Samantha. 

‘We learned about George Washington,’ said Derrick.

‘That vandal,’ said Nanny Piggins with a grunt of disgust.

‘No, the President of the United States,’ said Derrick.

‘Oh yes, I suppose he did that,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And he was the General that lead the Americans to over throw British rule with their obsessive tea taxes. And he did set the standard for all democratic leaders of stepping down voluntarily from power, which has allowed peaceful transition of power to become the norm in so many democracies around the world. And all that is tremendously good. But nothing alters the fact that his youth was marred by an axe wielding incident.’

‘It was?’ asked Samantha.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know all about it, because it just so happens that one of my relatives was there.’

‘Was she fabulously glamorous and stunningly good looking?’ asked Michael.

‘Well she was a Piggins,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She was the Washington family gardener.’

‘Really?’ asked Derrick. 

‘Yes, she really intensely disliked people,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But she was not speciest. She didn’t like pigs either. She liked plants. They were less chatty.’

‘Plants don’t talk at all,’ said Samantha.

‘Which was just the way she liked it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Plants don’t speak until spoken to. And they don’t even speak then. Ideal as far as she was concerned. Much preferable to children.’

‘She was quite content in the garden pruning the hedges, training the espaliers and ruthlessly hunting down aphids,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But as is so often the case in history, one day things when horribly wrong.’

‘What happened?’ asked Boris. ‘Did a wicked Ringmaster scoop her up in a sack and force her to join the circus?’ 

A similar thing had happened to Boris once, and he was forever concerned that it might happen to someone else.’

‘No it all started when the boy of the house, a young man named George had his sixth birthday party,’ said Nanny Piggins. 

‘Now normal sane adults when they buy presents for six year old usually go with something nice. Like a football, or a book, or a lifetime’s supply of ice cream. But goodness knows what got into young George’s parents heads. Perhaps they left the shopping too late and the only thing that was open was the the hardware store. Anyway they got their six year old an axe.’

‘An axe?’ said Samantha.

‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Did the word axe mean something different in the 18th century,’ she asked. ‘Like was axe the word for teddy bear or rubber ducky.’

‘No, then as now, an axe was an axe,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If you were being generous you might call it a hatchet. But that’s just the word for a small axe. There is no getting away from the fact that these adults bought a small child a small heavy implement of destruction.’

Now as you know, little children generally do enjoy smashing things and stomping on things and wrecking things. To be fair we all do. Adults included. But as you get older you come to realise that running along a beach and jumping on someone elses sand castle is frowned upon so you supressed these joyful destructive impulses. 

George was six, the age where most little boys enjoy the simplicity of running in a circle pretending to be a dinosaur. So give him an axe a simple tool with one purpose – cutting things down. He was obviously going to want to cut something down.’

His first thoughts were no doubt the legs of the dining chairs in the house. Or perhaps the legs of his sisters doll collection. Who knows, cousin Anna was not there to see that.

But inevitably George and his axe were bustled out of the house and he set out in search of something to use his axe on in the garden.

Now my dear cousin, was not just a regular gardener. She was a gardener par excellence. She was good with flowers, good with bedding plants, but the thing that she was really excellent was pruning fruit trees, or espaliering to be precise. She could prune any fruit tree into the most asthetically pleasing geometric pattern. So that the tree was a delight to behold and every leaf had the perfect exposure to light so that it in turn could grow the most beautiful crop of fruit. 

Her particular pride and joy was a cherry tree she had trained in the centre of the orchard. She had trained the branches to grow in the shape of the statue of The Venus De Milo.’

‘The Venus De Milo?’ asked Derrick.

‘Yes, it’s a very famous Roman statue on display in the Louvre in Paris,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s very beautiful. And of course the lady is nude, artists are such naughty men. And most famously the statue has no arms. But that is another story about my great times great aunt Helga and Helena, twins you know, who simultaneously had an itchy backs when she visited the Louvre and need to make themselves improvised back scratchers.’

‘And she pruned a cherry tree to look like that?’ asked Michael.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She was supremely talented. It produced the most delicious fruit as well. Great big dark red cherries the size of golf balls. And golf had not been invented yet. So when it was, for years people used to describe golf balls as being the size of her cherries. 

The tree was her pride and joy. It was almost like a child to her. Except in many ways better because the tree never needed help with it’s homework, or a lift to gymnastics, or to have it’s nose wiped like actual children do. So I’m sure you can sense the potential conflict that is about to arise.

Oh yes,’ wailed Boris. ‘The most beautiful cherry tree and a small boy with an axe – it can’t end well.’

‘Indeed,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘My dear cousin had just sat down to have a little cake break in her tool shed when she heard the most horrifying sound. The distinctive whoosh thud of an axe.

Now the fire wood had already all been chopped. There were no Visigoths or mongul hordes likely to attack. So there was no reason to believe that an axe could be hitting something it should. 

My cousin leapt to her trotters and ran in the direction of the sound. Sadly it was a large garden and even though she was a Piggins and therefore ran with the speed of an elite athlete. There were several more whoosh thuds before she arrived. She just burst in to the cental grove of the orchard and heard the dreaded cry of ‘Timber!’ shouted in the high pitch voice of six year old boy. 

She arrived in the central grove just in time to see the Venus De Milo collapse face down on the ground.

‘Noooooooooooooo!’ wailed Helda, falling to her knees and grabbing the tree to her chest. ‘No no no.’

Now the six year old boy was just a six year old boy,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He was no more wicked at heart than a tadpole. It wasn’t his fault an adult had thought it a good idea to give him an axe as a birthday present.’ And being a small child he was naturally quite alarmed, afraid even to be confronted by a fully grown pig who was deranged with grief.’

‘You,’ said Anna, turning on the boy. 

‘It wasn’t me,’ said the small boy, a fact abundantly contradicted by the axe still in his hands. 

‘Why did you do this?’ demanded Anna.

‘I got a new axe for my birthday,’ said the boy.

‘You have destroyed a tree,’ said Anna. ‘Do you understand what that means?’

The boy just shook his head. For he was an intelligent child, and while he knew what cutting down a tree meant, he sensed that this pig was talking metaphorically.

‘A tree is a beautiful structure created by nothing more than elements in the soil and energy from the sun build tiny cells, too small for the eye to see, and builds a great strong structure, with elegant branches, fluttering leaves and sweet delicious fruit. It transforms dirt into beauty and bountiful food. You have destroyed this, years of creation, just to try out an axe.

The boy predictably burst into tears. He was not a bad lad. 

‘I’m so sorry,’ he sobbed. ‘What can I do to make it right.’

Anna looked at the fallen tree, ‘Some things are so terrible they can not be made right,’ she said sadly.

The boy sobbed harder.

And so did Boris. He was feeling emotional - partly out of sadness for the story, and partly because the talk of cherry trees was making him think of cherry danishes.

Anna took pity on the boy and relented. You can make up for the crime you have commited here to today.

‘I’ll do anything, anything at all,’ said the boy.

Anna thought about what he could best do to make it right, ‘To make up for this you really will have to do a lot. You’ll have to become the best general this country has ever known, lead America to Independence, become the first president and yet don’t let the power go to your head and retire – standing aside to set the precedent of a peaceful transition of power that all democratic leaders around the world shall follow.’

The little boy frowned as he tried to take all this in.

‘Would you like me to write all that down for you?’ asked Anna.

‘Yes please,’ said the boy.

‘So she jotted down a list of instructions for him to follow,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She even threw in a few extra things like, hiring a secretary called Hamilton so that an award winning Broadway musical could be written 250 years later.’

‘The boy followed her instructions precisely and America has been a successful thriving democracy ever since, the end,’ said Nanny Piggins.

Derrick, Samantha and Michael were feeling a bit baffled by this tale.

‘Our history teacher told us a similar story,’ said Derrick. ‘But it was about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree, then confessing immediately when asked by his father that he ‘could not tell a lie, he did cut it down’.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Ironically that was a story invented to teach children not to lie. But that story is a total fabrication.’

‘Really?’ said Derrick.

‘Oh yes, grown ups are tremendously complicated people,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘They think nothing of telling a lie to teach a child not to lie.’

‘Gosh,’ said Samantha.

‘But you shouldn’t judge them too harshly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It is a great rule of story telling. Never let the truth ruin a good tale.’

‘But what about the tree?’ asked Michael. ‘What happened to the Venus De Milo. Did she end up being burned as fire wood.’

‘No actually,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘For Anna was a spectacularly gifted gardener. She actually managed to re-graft the tree back to it’s stump, by using a prodigious amount of sticky tape.’

‘Had sticky tape been invented in the 17th century?’ asked Samantha.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Not until that day. She was the Pig who invented it. So the Venus de Milo Cherry tree was re-erected, although she was a good deal shorter than she had been before the axe attack, but her cherries still tasted fabulous. The end. Time for cake.’