After experiencing the museum, Montgomery felt different. My class was silent. Nobody cared to crack any jokes. The air even started to smell different — like rotting garbage, reminiscent of the Southern Magnolia that Billie Holiday sung about decades prior.
Those trees were planted in 1977 — the same year the gas lamps were installed. Roughly more than two-thirds of the trees have since died, while the remaining five are in bad health, according to the letter.
