TOMMY KAPAI: Trees the answer to trammelling television

There is a great line in the latest Joss Stone album that goes, "If you don't like the peach then walk on by the tree".
Every time I hear it, there is a sense of deja vu that takes me to another time and place, as lyrics of our favourite songs do.
It walked on by again this week when I heard some very disturbing news.
No, it wasn't the epidemic of diabetes that is eating away at Maori, nor was it Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 listening in on Maori to find out where all the meke mussels and fat flounders are to be found.
Nor was it the findings of a nuclear scientist that told us we are closer now by 300 per cent to a nuclear war with North Korea than we ever were with Russia during the Bay of Pigs in the 60s.
No, it was my cousin telling me the disturbing news that none of his nephews had ever climbed a tree.
Not one of them knew what it was like to leap from limb to limb up a backyard tree and unless the tree was connected to a Gameboy mouse or a Playstation plasma screen these tamariki have no inclination of finding out what that simple climbing pleasure is.
Trees were a territory in my youth that held on to secrets and treasures. Only by climbing up them and falling out could we discover what trees were all about.
I remember this time of the year was particularly exciting because it meant the peaches on Ivan Edwards' tree, around the corner on Ranch Rd, were prime pickings.
Each day after school we would take the long road home to monitor the crimson content of the golden queen peaches on Mr Edwards' tree.
Then we would jump on our bikes that had names like Tonto, Black Beauty and Silver, race home to report back to the rest of the Macville Rd gang, waiting anxiously on our front lawn.
I truly did believe that my bike was a horsey and I was the Lone Ranger who was being chased by a tribe of "itchybums".
The rest of our gang at our front-yard fort couldn't come on the reconnaissance hikoi because they were either too small to ride or too poor to own a bike.
We would each give an account of what we had seen and where the biggest bombalombas were on Ivan's prized peach tree.
And as soon as they were as red as the pohutukawa flowers on the side of the Mount, we would assemble the raiding party after tea and wait for the safety of darkness to lighten the load on Ivan's front-yard Golden Queen.
The excitement as we ducked and dived through his back fence and up the side of his whare could never be equalled by any high-tech television game.
And reaching the very top of the tree to pluck the peach of all peaches was an adventure of the highest order.
There was no shaking of the branches as this could alert Ivan who usually sat outside on his porch after a brisk walk home from the local RSA.
Then it was running the gauntlet back home with a pocketful of peaches. When it come to sharing the spoils, that big bugger that I had plucked from the very top of the tree gave us all at least six bites each of pure peach pleasure.
I don't know whatever happened to Ivan Edwards but if you are reading this Bro, "thanks for the fantastic feeds and the hours of outside adventure".
Today, such is the distraction for our townie tamariki with high-tech cyber silliness that the thought of even opening a can of peaches, let alone flogging a feed off a neighbour's tree, doesn't even register on the radar.
I, for one, believe that television makes our little ones lazy because it does their thinking for them and if we don't find the off switch soon we could become a nation of geeks.
I still get a hankering for a climb when I see a laden fruit tree but even though I do love peaches I am happy to relive the memories of Ivan Edwards' golden queens and am happy to just walk on by the tree.