Auburn plants live oaks at Toomer's Corner -- four years after tree poisoning
Toomer's Corner has become whole again.
Four years after Auburn University had been victimized by a senseless act of campus vandalism, the celebrated intersection of Magnolia Avenue and College Street received a welcomed facelift on Saturday -- through the planting of two live oak trees across from Toomer's Drugs.
Twenty-two months ago (April 2013), Auburn officials used the football program's spring scrimmage, aka A-Day, as the platform date for giving the original oak trees -- which were poisoned by a disgruntled Alabama Crimson Tide fan -- a proper public sendoff.
But on this day, Toomer's Corner served as the sole focal point for Auburn fans everywhere, as two South Carolina-groomed live oaks were planted at Toomer's Corner -- a pair of majestic trees that were apparently selected from a grove of 9,000.
According to AlabamaLive.com, the "university also purchased a third tree of the same height. That tree, which will be planted outside the Facilities Management Complex, will essentially serve as a spare in case an issue with one of the others arises."
The Saturday planting completed the final step of Phase I, in terms of renovating Samford Park along Auburn's campus. Phase II, according to reports, will entail the planting of 30 15-foot-high trees -- "grown from acorns collected by the original oaks."
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For those who believe that big-time college athletics -- especially with football -- have become too serious, too expensive and too extravagant in recent years, Harvey Updyke represents the face of such a gluttonous era.
Still stewing from Alabama's November 2010 defeat to No. 1 Auburn (and Heisman winner Cam Newton), Updyke -- a lifelong Crimson Tide supporter -- apparently drove to Auburn's campus one early morning and spiked a pair of Toomer's oaks with a deadly herbicide.
He then went on Paul Finebaum's national radio show to brag, with zero remorse, about the supposed tree-poisoning at Toomer's Corner. A subsequent investigation revealed that two trees had been doused by a large quantity -- or even lethal dose -- of Spike 80DF (Tebuthiuron).
Updyke would later recant his story, but only after police officials arrested the former state trooper with a felonious count of criminal mischief. Updyke subsequently went to jail and was ordered to pay a large fine, to the future benefit of Auburn.
But that's all in the past.
Moving forward, Toomer's Corner has recaptured its tree-lined beauty ... and shall once again be the epicenter of college football's most heralded toilet paper-based victory celebrations -- a tradition which hearkens back 60-plus years.
