“Stumpy”

Every spring on the National Mall in Washington, DC, the cherry trees bloom to the delight of millions of visitors. Some of the trees, though, because of rising waters of the Tidal Basin, decayed and died. Yet one Japanese cherry tree, though hollowed out, continued to blossom. When the National Park Service had to remove the tree in 2024 to fix the seawall, which was failing, cuttings were taken to the U.S. National Arboretum for later replanting. The famous blossoming tree even had a name.

Longtime Chicoan Karen McHenry tells the story of “Stumpy” ($19 in hardcover from Kismet Publishing), a lyrical children’s book for ages 6-10, from the tree’s perspective. The colorful illustrations by Tommy Hardman, where pink blossoms predominate, bring Stumpy to life. 

A tourist sensation during the day, as night comes Stumpy is alone with his thoughts. “It is silent now, except for the lapping of the water at the sea wall and the rattling of leftover autumn leaves twirling past. Stumpy gazes out over the Tidal Basin that has been his lifelong home and wonders what becomes of cherry trees when they are cut down. He shudders, knowing that it isn’t the chill breeze blowing around him. He was once a robust, sturdy tree. Now, he is scrawny and crooked and hollow inside.”

Yet Stumpy continues to bloom and a visiting bird calls Stumpy “the Little Cherry Tree That Could.” What’s more, says the bird, “People see you as a symbol of perseverance—because you refuse to give up. That is why they come to take your picture, and put flowers at your roots, and play music for you.” Those words “warm Stumpy’s hollow core, down to his chilly roots.”

Later a mysterious voice tells Stumpy that it’s too late for him to be moved; he must be cut down. What will happen then? The voice responds that clippings from Stumpy will be replanted: “You will live on, not only in people’s hearts, but in new trees. … The Sakura Japanese cherry blossoms are a symbol of a life well lived. And you, Stumpy, are a symbol of that, too.”

May McHenry’s pitch-perfect story tug at your heart and blossom into resilience.

“100 Years Of Ridin’ Wild! Red Bluff Round-Up, 1921-2021”

The Red Bluff Round-Up is “the largest three-day rodeo in the United States.” As Josie Smith writes, “The Round-Up is more than a rodeo. It’s a living, breathing testament to the quintessential true grit spirit of Tehama County, its sense of community, and the determined resilience of the American West.”

As memories linger after the Round-Up each April, they are added to its extraordinary history, which Smith, a board member of the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society, has compiled with the help of many hands. “100 Years Of Ridin’ Wild! Red Bluff Round-Up, 1921-2021” ($79.95 in large-size softcover from Chico’s Stansbury Publishing) is available at the Red Bluff Round-Up Mercantile Store, 649 Main Street, Suite 1. The store is open Tuesday through Friday from 11:00 am – 5:00 pm and Saturday from 10:00 am – 5:00 pm.

Each chapter covers a decade of the Round-Up, full of personal stories. There are hundreds of black and white and color photographs and a century of champions. “I took one year out of the picture business to go into rodeo,” team roper and actor Ben Johnson noted. “My dad was a world’s champion, so I wanted to be. I won the world’s championship in team roping (1953), but at the end of the year, I didn’t have $3. All I had was a wore-out pickup truck and a mad wife.”

Radio announcer Bob Tallman put it this way: “Pick a road, any county road. You’re going about 40 miles an hour in your pickup. At that point, jump out, and try to tackle a mailbox. That’s steer wrestling.”

It began October 6, 1921. That day, Tehama County Day, “the first day of the Red Bluff Round-Up, private businesses closed at noon so people could enjoy … the opening of a four-day rodeo program put on by the newly created Red Bluff Round-Up Association. The Red Bluff Daily News enthusiastically declared: ‘Red Bluff Rodeo Starts With A Whoop!’”

The book is a stunning achievement. 

Give the last word to bullfighter Felix Cooper, who noted in April 1974 that “If the whole world was full of rodeo people, it would be a good world.”

“The Heyday Of Willie, Duke, And Mickey: New York City Baseball’s Golden Age Amid Integration”

Robert C. Cottrell is Professor Emeritus at Chico State in History and American Studies, but he’s also a consummate baseball historian. In “The Heyday Of Willie, Duke, And Mickey: New York City Baseball’s Golden Age Amid Integration” ($38 in hardcover from Bloomsbury Academic; also for Amazon Kindle), Cottrell focuses on an unmatched era in Major League Baseball.

“At different points during the mid-1950s,” he writes, “Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Mickey Mantle were each viewed as not only the greatest center fielder but the finest player in the major leagues, in addition to being a candidate to eclipse Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record.” The statistics are all here, but so are the stories.

“For the four years—1954-1957—featured in this book,” he adds, “Mays, Snider, and Mantle vied for supremacy among New York City center fielders as their teams strove for and reached the pinnacle of American sports at the time. Each was proclaimed, for one year at least during that critical period, the very best player in the game as he led his respective team to a World Series championship.”

The Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers  “exuded star power befitting their sporting prowess and New York City’s preeminence.” 

Yet Cottrell’s story “is also that of the game’s far too belated integration, its reticence in pushing back against the American nation’s racial divisions. The decision by some in Organized Baseball to sign Robinson, Doby, Campanella, Don Newcombe, Paige, Minnie Minoso, Irvin, Mays, Aaron, and Ernie Banks to contracts paralleled the budding civil rights struggle to rid the United States of hateful, hurtful, poisonous Jim Crow edicts and discriminatory practices.”

In fact, “only recently have Negro League games, according to MLB, been acknowledged as on par with those of the major leagues.” In postwar baseball, the Negro Leagues began to “wither,” as Cottrell writes, “tempered by the introduction of Black players into the National and American leagues….”

Cottrell also documents the painful moves of the Dodgers to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco. 

All in all, it’s inside baseball, a paean of praise to a beloved game, warts and all.

“The Family Liar: A Novel”

Teri Kanefield (terikanefield.com), with a law degree from UC Berkeley and a degree in fiction writing from UC Davis, now lives in San Luis Obispo. She writes me that her “husband lived in Los Molinos. We spent lots of time in Chico because my stepdaughter was in a production of Annie at the Chico Theater Company.” All the while, for more than forty years actually, she wanted to tell a story based on her life in a horrendously dysfunctional family.

Though she changed names, “telescoped events, combined minor characters, and left out a lot,” she drew on “letters, diaries I began keeping at the age of twelve, and memory…. To borrow Emily Dickinson’s phrase, this novel is my letter to the world.” 

“The Family Liar: A Novel” ($18.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is a kind of mystery story told by Natalie; in later life she is determined to discover the reasons her father, Jack, was mostly withdrawn and passive while his wife, Natalie’s mother Lenora, operated as a master manipulator, turning family member against family member. 

The couple married in 1959 “at United Hebrew, St. Louis’s reform temple. After the wedding, they rented a one-bedroom apartment four miles from Jack’s television repair shop.” Natalie was born a year later.

When she was eight, a game of pennies taken from her father’s piggy bank went awry, and her mother, “impatient with my explanations, said ‘I can see you are a liar, but I’m not going to spank you. Your punishment is that from now on you will be known as the family liar. We will always know who the liar is. Once a liar, always a liar.’”

The family, including siblings Carly and Teddy, moved to California when Natalie was ten. Natalie could hardly wait until she turned 18 to leave. On her own, virtually ignored by her family, which was breaking apart, Natalie contended with the nagging question: Is it all my fault? Am I bad?

The story, raw in its emotions and psychologically astute, offers a kind of answer to Natalie’s mystery and, as a result, a powerful transformation of Natalie herself and, perhaps, even the reader.