As I was walking across campus today, I noticed that an old orange tree that used to stand behind a house (the house was moved to accomadate the construction of a new business school building) had been torn down.  The oranges were all in a pile where the tree had been, and the tree itself was broken up in the middle of the construction site.

Now, I knew that tree already.  It was usually full of oranges in the winter, and often my girlfriend and I had talked about the fact that the oranges were not used for anything.  They were simply allowed to stay on the tree.  I considered taking one, at least to see if they were any good, when the tree was still up.  However, I decided against it.  After all it wasn’t my tree, and I didn’t have the right to take the fruit, as I do not want to end up like St. Augustine in my old age, agonizing over it .  Anyway, assuming that the tree produced good fruit, it was a sad waste that the fruit from that tree was wasted while the cafeteria sold oranges brought in from elsewhere.

Anyway, the tree is now gone, a fact about which I am surprisingly sad.  It was a beautiful tree, and it had been behind a small house, in just the same way as most of the little houses in Santa Clara have orange trees.  Even if the fruit was bad, which I doubt, it is quite a sad loss of a beautiful piece of history.