The Headless Eagle

Before we purchased our current home,  I did a drive by to do my preliminary list of pros and cons. As I approached the house, this is what confronted me in the front yard:

It was almost a deal breaker for me.  Luckily, my more level-headed husband suggested we buy a chain saw, chop it down and move it to the backyard.  This was on our short list of things to do when we moved in, but five years later the eagle still resides on our front lawn.  

The eagle has grown on us, mainly because of the importance it had to John, the man who we bought the house from.  He was a World War II veteran who survived one of the worst naval disasters of all times. Here is just one harrowing account of what his experience may have been like: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/indianapolis.htm  The eagle is the emblem of he U.S. Navy and when we met this former war vet at the closing of our house, he spoke so fondly and proudly of the eagle, that we pretty much knew right then and there that we wouldn’t have the heart to chop it down.

That being said, we also didn’t do much to take care of our eagle.  It gets egged and toilet papered on mischief night, it gets infested with bee hives in the summer, and the base of the tree is beginning to rot away. 


The eagle is an original Marty Long sculpture -  Long is responsible for many other recognizable carvings around the main line, a few are even on our block. We have had people offer to chop it down for us if they could keep it and, ironically enough, I get all defensive of MY eagle and think, “Hell no, you can’t have our damn statue!”


Unfortunately, it is time for the eagle to go.  This past winter it’s head fell off and the rotting tree trunk is in danger of attracting termites and more bees. This is now what greets people as they approach our home:

 I feel guilty that we let the eagle fall into such disrepair, and that this remembrance of John will soon be gone.  Without getting too sentimental about the eagle and all that it represented, it is an end of an era.  John and his wife passed away shortly after we moved into the house. The first person accounts of the experiences of John’s time are getting to the point of only being available in print and, as more wars and disasters fill our immediate memory, the war that old John fought is fading into distant history.

I am sorry to no longer be able to say to someone coming to our house, “It’s the fifth house on the left.  The one with the eagle in the front yard.”