The Tree With Seven Days In It — Tree of Life, Waco, Texas
A stop on the Waco's Walls trail

69The Tree With Seven Days In It

"Tree of Life" — Creative Waco ARTPrenticeship, completed February 2021. Lead designers Vincent Thomas and Cade Kegerreis; mentors Kristen Thompson, Tashita Bibles and Will Suarez; fourteen ARTPrentices. TFNB, 713 Elm AvenueMURAL

A whole building of East Waco's own memory — and the wall is divided into seven panels, one for each day of the week.

It runs the length of a building and then turns the corner and keeps going, and there is no single place to stand where you can see all of it. Start at the south-west end: PRAY in gold with a heart inside the A, FAITH climbing the wall, and a sunburst medallion with EAST WACO arched over it in red. Below that, an open book the size of a door with UNITY hand-lettered across the page and, underneath, How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in peace! — Psalm 133:1. Along the very bottom, running the whole way in root-shaped letters that grow out of the ground: TOGETHER.

Keep walking. Quilts and babies. Graduates. A runner in a blue jersey lettered Waco Eastern. A Cadillac. A grocer's storefront painted over a real doorway, so the door becomes part of the shop. A banner reading JUNETEENTH over a produce stand. And at the far end, a young sailor in Navy dress whites with the word Honor lettered beside him.

Most of what it paints is gone. There is a marquee for the ALPHA, the theatre three Black Waco GIs designed while they were stationed on Saipan in the Second World War and built on Clifton Street when they got home, after the local banks turned them down. There is one for the GEM, which stood over on the old square. The square's whole Black business district — some two hundred buildings — was cleared by federal urban renewal in 1970. The street signs painted on the pole read REACH, TEACH, EACH ONE, which is a nod to Each One Reach One Teach One, a Chesley Smith mural painted three doors up this same avenue in 2005. The wall quotes its own street.

The plaque explains the structure, and it is worth knowing before you walk it: the wall is naturally divided into 7 panels, and each represents a day of the week, interwoven with symbolic fruits and stories from East Waco. It was completed in February 2021 by fourteen apprentices through Creative Waco's ARTPrenticeship programme — the same programme that painted The Spirit of We six stops back — with Vincent Thomas and Cade Kegerreis leading the design. Thomas grew up here. He also painted eight of the murals inside the STEAM center where this walk started.

📍 Walk me there See it on the trail map

More views

The Tree With Seven Days In It — The GROCER end, with Juneteenth and the sailor
The GROCER end, with Juneteenth and the sailor
The Tree With Seven Days In It — The other end: PRAY, FAITH, EAST WACO, UNITY
The other end: PRAY, FAITH, EAST WACO, UNITY
The Tree With Seven Days In It — The open book, and Psalm 133:1
The open book, and Psalm 133:1
The Tree With Seven Days In It — Quilts, graduates and the Waco Eastern jersey
Quilts, graduates and the Waco Eastern jersey
The Tree With Seven Days In It — Growth Starts Here
Growth Starts Here
The Tree With Seven Days In It — The GEM Theatre, painted back onto its own street
The GEM Theatre, painted back onto its own street
The Tree With Seven Days In It — The plaque: fourteen apprentices, named
The plaque: fourteen apprentices, named

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