I have an extensive relationship with Money Trees, the plant scientifically known as the Pachira aquatica. The Money Tree has served as a kind of motif throughout my life. For over a third of my living days, a Money Tree has been by my side, a constant in an existence of constant change. The Money Tree I have now has been with me for just about a decade, and as of the last few months, it has been the target of high strangeness.
The Money Tree (San Francisco)
The first Money Tree that I bought seems now to have happened in another lifetime. I was 21 years old and in love. An ex-girlfriend and I were stepping our relationship up to the next level by moving in together. We lived on the third floor of a San Francisco-style home in the Outer Sunset District, right on the corner of 33rd and Kirkham. The 3-bedroom apartment was mostly empty, so we decided to get some plants for the place. One of those plants was a tiny Money Tree, no more than eight inches high.
I did not research how to take care of the plant. I figured it was a plant, and it would take care of itself for the most part, as long as it had sun and water. Stupidly, I placed the little tree on our small porch on an uncommonly sunny day for The Avenues. When I went to grab it later that day, all the leaves were khaki-colored, and the poor twisted trunk was squishy and cardboard-like. But I was determined to try again. That next weekend, I bought another Money Tree. This one I would manage to keep alive for years.
“… a strange concoction of redneck ranch and a poor man’s trap house.”
A couple of years later, I had transformed the apartment into a madhouse by letting a bunch of my friends and coworkers move in. It was like a strange concoction of redneck ranch and a poor man’s trap house. Windows had been broken with BB guns, and one of the roommates was nearly dead, with yellow eyes and a failing liver. The other was a gay man from Tunisia who is quite possibly the most dangerous person I have ever met in my life. He was also my boss at both of my dead-end jobs. Last I heard, he is a multi-millionaire. Crypto. On top of that, three dudes were occupying the living room. One was an artist who, at the time, was completely unhinged. One was an upcoming skateboarder who rarely spoke, and the other was a muscular 1st generation Cambodian from Long Beach. He was like my girlfriend’s brother, and when they had a falling out, he disappeared, stealing the artist’s P coat along with other meaningless items. Once the landlord found out what was going on (her poor elderly father had to live below us), she kicked us with the boot.
My relationship was over, too. Alongside all of the madness that went on and on, day after night after day, my girlfriend was somehow juggling a full-time job as a full-time student pursuing her major in International Relations. The moment she got a chance to travel abroad, she bolted, fleeing the madness that she had grown out of loving. So, I packed up the few things I had and moved into a house in Divisadero with three girls, the Money Tree being my most prized possession. Although the thing never grew, it never died, either. It just stayed the same.
Over the course of two years, that little Money Tree traveled with me to every place I ended up. I got kicked out of every house I lived in San Francisco, all six of them. When the girls kicked me out of the Divisadero spot, I ended up in the Inner Richmond. I got kicked out of there, and the little tree lived with me in Golden Gate Park for a night or two and then in The Oasis hotel for a week in the Mission District. Then I ended up moving into a small closet, also in the Inner Richmond. I’d eventually get the boot from there for always smoking in the shower… while taking a shower. Yeah, it makes no sense. Then the tree traveled with me to Ingleside, where I’d stay for 6 months or so, only to eventually get kicked out of that place, too. It ended up in a small studio in the Excelsior District, where I lived with the late and great David Abair. And like all of the other places, I would eventually be moved along from there, too.
When I left Abair’s house, I was homeless, lying my head anywhere I could find. Sometimes I would go to house parties, not knowing anyone, and would creep away into a bedroom and pass out in a closet. For a while I lived with a pimp in the Tenderloin District and after I gfot kicked out of there, I started staying with a chick in the Outer Mission. We lived in a garage. Since I never had anywhere stable to go, I left the Money Tree with Abair, which he took great care of. However, it never grew. It always stayed at a height of like 8” or so.
Although I didn’t live with Abair, we still partied together often. Partying may be an understatement. I think “bender” would best describe it. Then one early morning after an especially long 3 days, Abair and I got into this huge fight (we would always get into these domestic disputes at the tail ends of a bender), and in my rage, I grabbed the Money Tree and chucked it out the door onto the street. And that is where the life of that Money Tree ended.
The Money Tree (San Jose to Bremerton)
About 5 years after the purchase of my first Money Tree, I ended up getting another one. Oddly enough, the circumstances of my life were pretty much the same as they were when I bought the first Money Tree. My ex-wife and I had recently gotten married. When we moved her from Texas to San Jose, we stayed with my father. After 5 months or so, we both had decent jobs and had enough money to get our own place. To celebrate, and just like I did in San Francisco, I bought a Money Tree for our new studio a week or so before we moved in. I would also make the same mistake as I did in SF: I put it on my father’s back porch in the middle of a San Jose shit-soaked summer, and like the one in SF, it was fried. But I was not about to give up. The day we moved into our studio, I bought another small Money Tree.
The studio we moved into sat between a Big Lots, where many a camper full of tweakers lived, and a park called Butcher Park, which also hosted many campers with tweakers living in them. The place could not have been more than 800 square feet, one large room that would host our bedroom, living room, and dining room. I set my office up in the kitchen, which was a laptop, the small Money Tree, and a large, iconic X-Files, “I Want to Believe” poster. The “panel” that powered the place was a fuse box, and one night, when I was using the microwave, the small panel exploded, catching fire and pouring a thick, rancid cloud of black smoke into our small studio. Lucky for us, the fire station was literally at the end of the block. I can still remember the wild scene: our dinners untouched on our small coffee table, my ex-wife’s eyes bulging with terror as ripped firemen rushed into our home, cutting open the smoldering wall with a large red ax. We had to move out for 3 days, and were not allowed to even enter the studio because our home was a health hazard. We stayed with my aunt, and on the first night, I realized that I had left the Money Tree in the hazardous space. I feared that it would die. But, to my happiness, the Money Tree was still alive when we returned. In fact, it was thriving.
Unlike all of the previous Money Trees I had, this one was actually growing. By the time we ended up getting evicted from the studio for partying too much and getting in loud fights, the tree had grown from about six inches to a foot. These little trees are slow growers, but watching them grow gives me a sense of pride that is likely the closest thing to parenthood I have ever experienced (yeah, I am aware of how sad that sounds). After getting evicted from the studio, we moved down Camden Avenue about a mile or so to the Del Coronado Apartments—oddly enough, the same apartments where that dollar disappeared so long ago.
These apartments had not changed much since I was a child running through the alleys and cryptic stairwells, doing graffiti and drinking malt liquor. It was a rough place, with a parking lot visible from our porch that would erupt with campers full of tweakers after the sun set. In one instance, my neighbor and I got into a substance-fueled altercation. He was spun out on speed, and I was drunk… and probably also spun out on speed. The skirmish ended with him stabbing me in the neck. I can still see his eyes, wide and full of terror, as the blade was buried in the side of my neck, just missing the jugular and some other main nerve by centimeters. I won’t lie; I had it coming to me. I had ventured far beyond “out of line.”
Our other neighbor was likely a serial killer, some piece of shit who was the culprit of the horrific 1970’s Stanford Church Slaying. He blew his brains out when the feds raided his studio apartment. Less than a month later, there were Christmas lights around the window of the apartment. I think it is safe to say that the landlord did not share the apartment’s history with the new tenants. But even amidst all this chaos and dark energy swirling around its environment, the Money Tree flourished.
After we left that apartment, we ended up moving into a two-bedroom gated community in Santa Clara, with a nice little park on one side of us and a golf course on the other. Usually, the Money Tree would live in my office, a plant that I’d have sitting on the small red drawer I use to hold various office supplies. But by the time we made it six months in our new place, the Money Tree outgrew its home next to my desk. At this point, it was at least 3 feet tall, so it graduated from a side desk plant to a ground plant. The little guy was really growing up. And I was proud.
“After being out for less than 20 minutes, I felt like a weird old guy. This town was full of purple-haired kids in their early 20s.”
Fast forward about two years, and my marriage was over. After a six-week stint living in my truck and a short stint in the loony bin, I finally came home. She was gone, and we had a week to evade the premises. I shuffled manically to get all of our things out of the apartment, and on the last night of our lease, I threw a going-away party and started using again. Although this bender was short-lived, as always, it ended badly, waking up in an ER being told that I tried to commit suicide by overdosing on anti-psychotics.
When I got out of the nut house (again), I spent two weeks at my father’s house, where I got my health back and prepared to leave San Jose for good. I spent my days working, clicking away at a keyboard, eating well, sleeping normally, reading as much as I could, and working out daily. The Money Tree lived with me in one of the bedrooms of my childhood home. After two weeks, I packed my life into a large white van and placed the Money Tree on the passenger seat. My old friend would be my copilot, my partner in crime, my road dog.
With Bremerton, WA, as my end destination, I drove 9 straight hours to Eugene, where I got a cheap hotel in a quaint place right on the outskirts of downtown. The first thing I did was unload my Apple desktop and then my Money Tree into the room. Sitting in the dimly lit room, I quickly grew bored, and being single for the first time in a decade, I thought I’d go out and try to meet girls. After being out for less than 20 minutes, I felt like a weird old guy. This town was full of purple-haired kids in their early 20s, and all of them glared at me with looks of utter disgust. So, I gave up on meeting women and started drinking whiskey, hard. I got cut off at a bar and walked next door where some kind of twisted species of a nightclub was pumping out bass and colorful lights onto the sidewalk. In it was a group of people awkwardly standing by a bar, and a pasty, malnourished white dude rapping on a small stage. The next morning, I awoke in a Springfield hospital, hooked up to an IV. Knowing that it was long past checkout time, I panicked and ripped the thing out of my arm. Blood started spouting everywhere, and a nurse hurried in to try to calm me down. I caught my wits and then calmly told her that I was leaving.
The old woman who owned the hotel was sympathetic to my late checkout and let my tardiness slide with no fee. I packed up my computer and my trusty Money Tree and got on the road, arriving in Bremerton right when the Super Bowl 2023 halftime show began. Arriving in Bremerton overwhelmed me with that full circle feeling that I have spent most of my life ignoring and running in circles from. When I was 16 and witnessed my friend fall off that cliff, I had come to Bremerton just days after it had happened. After that first taste of travel, I hit the road and didn’t stop running for 5 years. Almost exactly 20 years later, following another life-shaking event—change in its purest and most ruthless form—I ended up here, in Bremerton, again. This time for keeps. The Money Tree and I have been here ever since.
I was super nervous as to how the 3.5’ Money Tree was going to react to Washington’s cold, gray days. To my surprise, the tree loved it. One of my oldest friends and my newest roommate let me set up my office in his house, which is separate from mine, and the Money Tree thrived by an open window that, when looking out on a clear day, one could see Mount Rainier’s snow-cloaked peak. Eventually, I would move my office and the Money Tree to my zone, out of his house, and again, I worried how the plant would adapt. I have learned over time that these trees don’t usually take well to change. I placed the tree in my living room, and to my surprise, it thrived, growing stronger and taller with each passing week. Well, that was until about a month ago.