Janet

Janet

Tree’s

Reading Time: 4 minutes

We sat around the table, the four of us.

“Where should we eat?”  Saundra said.

No one wanted to choose. It was already past 8pm and all of us had gotten up early, worked hard, and despite it being Friday, staying up late through throngs of weekend-starting revelers who wanted to eat out didn’t sound so good.

Steve mentioned it first. “I’ve never been to that place down the road. That old white house that sells barbque. Anybody want to try that?

“You mean Trees?” Silent Bob named the place.

Tree’s isn’t a place that you could take just anybody to.  Its not run like an ordinary Houston restaurant.

Tree’s sits about 50 yards back from the road, a little up from Heiden’s feed store. Both establishments have been in the northwestern part of Houston back when the road they front was dirt and all around them were cotton fields. Tree’s was probably a homestead back then and not a restaurant, as it’s white clapboard exterior and lopsided piered and beamed supported insides attest to converted bedrooms and hallways rather than planned restaurant seating.

You’d miss Tree’s unless your observant. Me, I had something of a history with the place.

My first experience with Tree’s was with Jake. Despite Jake dying at 27,  he’d managed to visit Tree’s often enough that rummaging around in Tree’s outside garage area, he negotiated a price for a non-working V-8 engine someone had pulled from something. To this day, its still a mystery to me why Jake was captivated enough with that piece of junk to drag it home to our garage, let alone pay 100 dolla