Go Fish Galvez

Is this unbelievable or what?

Of course, I had been keeping up with the ongoing dilemma of what to do about all those grand old live oaks that were ravaged by the saltwater surge due to Hurricane Ike, stately sentinels that for a century had adorned the lovely Victorian section of Galveston called the East End.

A Tin Man I'll Call Woody

Understandably, residents there were reluctant to let them go, to see them succumb to the axe and chainsaw, even though dead as doornails they were, without question.

And then someone had a great idea. Someone with one of those chainsaws, in fact.

The idea? To limb the trees but leave the stumps, and from the stumps to fashion art, creating sculptures from the ruins of the grand old trees, transforming the dead hulks into nearly living works of inspiration and hope.

Well, I thought it was a fabulous idea and even knew about, for example, the dalmatian dog sculpture, with corresponding fire hydrant, that had been reported in the paper. But I was unaware of, and not fully prepared for, the image that jumped out at me from the pages of the latest issue of The Islander Magazine: a wood carving in the shape of the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz,” frozen very Oz-like at the corner of 17th and Winnie. Wow!

King Wallis Vidor

And why, pray, did the owners of the Victorian house at that location select the Tin Man as the subject of their particular wood carving?

Well, more Galveston color here: They discovered that apparently their home was the childhood residence of none other than King Vidor, one of the directors of that classic, “The Wizard of Oz” (and who, by the way, was a BOI who, at only six years old, somehow managed to survive the Great Storm of 1900).

Once again, the spirit of this irrepressible old sandbar makes me smile…