This Lemon tree, like the one in the song, was indeed very pretty.
But it became a hazard because of rot in its trunk and roots, so when it was felled on Monday, urban forester Seth San Filippo stepped in to make his own brand of lemonade from the tree - which actually was a big leaf maple.
"I love working on trees like this," San Filippo said as he waited for a city contractor to drop the 100-year-old Eugene landmark.
"People have personal memories of it."
The tree - at the corner of 13th Avenue and Mill Street - borrowed its name from the late Charlotte Lemon, who enjoyed the tree in the front yard of her home at 1280 Mill St., from the time her father bought the house in 1919 until she died in 1994.
The tree even warranted a neighborhood wake and the ceremonial planting of two new trees in a nearby park during the past weekend.
"It's like the old and the new," said Drix Rixmann, a neighborhood resident and secretary of the West University Neighborhood Association.
"It was a lot better than having protesters and pepper spray, I'll tell you," said Amy Carpenter, who has owned the Lemon house for the past 10 years. "It was a much better process than some I've heard of in this city."
And neighbors agree that San Filippo's salvage operation is icing on the cake.
His business - Urban Lumber Co. - makes specialty lumber from the usable sections of city trees that must be cut due to disease or displacement.
"It's amazing how many trees come down," San Filippo said. "I think it's kind of unknown. People don't think about this as a resource around here."
He currently has 60 to 80 logs waiting to be milled at his lumber yard at 2440 Main St., in Springfield.
San Filippo works with his friends Scott and Spencer Early of Cottage Grove, who own London Lumber - a custom milling operation that uses a portable sawmill.
He focuses on hardwood and typically sells his products to hobbyists and crafters.
There is no standard price for the wood, he said, because it varies widely depending on size and type.
He usually mills 1-inch-thick planks, but he sometimes doubles the thickness and cuts either three-dimensional boards or leaves natural bark edges for a rough-hewn look on coffee tables and other furniture.
"There have been a lot of (musical) instrument makers," San Filippo said. "And definitely a lot of furniture and lots of mantels. I've been working with a few local cabinet shops that want to work with local products."
One local landowner contacted San Filippo after a giant maple tree toppled onto his property.
Its wood was milled to be used as cabinets in the man's house, which he happened to be remodeling at the time.
Property owners often don't understand that their trees have commercial value and either cut them for firewood or chip them into mulch.
San Filippo states on his Web site (www.urban lumbercompany.com) that as much as 4 billion board feet of lumber goes to waste each year across the United States because landowners and municipalities don't bother to salvage usable portions of diseased or blown-down trees.
The Lemon tree, after its canopy was chipped and merchantable sections cut away from the mostly hollow trunk, was expected to yield as much as 1,500 board feet of lumber.
As in most cases, San Filippo agreed to remove the bulk of the tree in 8- to 10-foot sections, in return for whatever profit he can turn from the lumber.
"It's a liability when it's like this - it's a dead tree," he said as the contract arborists started pruning branches away from the historic tree Monday morning.
"I'm kind of doing everybody a favor."
Before buying his retail storefront - the former Scotty's Hardwood location - San Filippo built his business at home and on a shoestring.
"That was until I had about 18 logs and a crane truck in my driveway - in a cul-de-sac," he says.Eugene Register-Guard
