I LOOKED meditatively at the tree I had
just been told was the carob tree, or St.-John's-bread, a
familiar tree in southern California, where its sweet,
nourishing pods are still used as stock feed. The pods of
this tree together with honeycomb from some wild bees' hive
composed the fare of John the Baptist.
It was not a large tree, but it had a
sturdy look that pleased. Its head was globular and densely
foliaged. Its twigs were strong and upstanding. It had none
of the lackadaisical grace of the pepper trees with their
swaying string-like branches. It was comely rather than
beautiful. Its buxom full-leafed maturity suggested
strength, patience, cheerfulness, wholesomeness,
dependability. I could not imagine birds in a storm
harboring in a pepper tree, much as I love that willowy
lady. But wind-beaten birds would be sheltered and secure in
a carob tree.
Carob trees are well groomed—no unkempt
shedding of bark or berries as with eucalyptus and pepper
trees. Tidy gardeners are always picking up after those
snobs who drop their discarded garments where fancy
dictates, selfishly oblivious of the work they cause others.
Carob trees are neat and tidy and thoughtful of their
surroundings.
Carob leaves are beautiful, partaking of
the well-rounded comeliness of the whole tree. Carob leaves
are compound leaves, as pepper leaves are, but carob leaves
do not have threadlike midribs and weak, pointed leaflets;
carob leaves are strong, their leaflets firm, tough, and
rounded.
The carob tree made me think of John the
Baptist. Jesus might have said to a southern California
group: "What went ye out to the arroyo to see? A pepper tree
swaying with the wind? A eucalyptus tree shedding its bark
to show off its soft, silken inner garments?" The ways of
these trees are suggestive of character. The sturdy,
dependable appearance of the carob tree suggests the power
of John's soul.
The carob reminds me of another Bible
character-but not by resemblance. A young scion of nobility,
well endowed, had a yen for the glamour world of the Sunset
Boulevard "Strip." He dined on cocktails and caviar and
thought himself well fed. He perceived not that the only
glitter was the reflection of what light still clung about
him from his father's house. The only wealth in that country
he brought in from his father's treasury-the natives lived
off ensnared tourists. Starving, he was reduced to
eating-carob pods. "Husks" the natives called them and fed
them contemptuously to their swine. But they were sweet to
the prodigal's taste; they medicated his diseased body; his
beclouded mind cleared; they recalled the heavenly food on
his father's table.
I looked up at the dense green dome of
the carob tree. Many of the compound leaves did not spread
flat, but the leaflets folded together like book pages. I
thought, "Leaves of the St.-John's-bread tree-they remind me
of leaves of the Bible, the bread of life."
