Something Went Very Wrong At Toomer's Corner a die-hard Alabama fan is about to be tried for allegedly poisoning Auburn's beloved oak trees. To understand why someone would do this, you have to look at the fan's roots

Tommy Tomlinson

They were among the first ones to arrive. But then Toni Rich saw the people coming from every direction, across the lawns of the campus, up Magnolia Avenue and down College Street, to the spot where the two 30-foot-tall oak trees have framed Auburn's main entrance for 130 years. Sheldon Toomer, a halfback on the Tigers' first football team, in 1892, built a drugstore diagonally across the street in 1896. Because of Toomer's Drugs the intersection is Toomer's Corner, and because of that, the trees are Toomer's Oaks.

That quote is both truth and a lie.

He played offensive line at Milton High. One year he went to watch the Senior Bowl in Mobile, and the story he later told friends was that he walked right up to the Bear and declared, "I'm going to play for you." The coach supposedly replied, "I hope so, son." But Updyke didn't. After graduating from Milton in 1967, he went to junior college, then headed for Texas believing there were better job opportunities for him there. He went to his first Crimson Tide game in 1970, when Alabama played Oklahoma in the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. He ran onto the field in the third quarter, carrying two rolls of toilet paper on a broom handle and a box of Tide detergent. Roll Tide.

Michigan--Ohio State, Oklahoma-Texas: Those fans live across borders. Alabama people and Auburn people grow up together, go to church together, shop at the same malls, eat at the same catfish joints. They share one state with no pro teams and not a square foot of neutral ground.

Harvey Updyke and Wayne Barnes had tickets to the Iron Bowl. Before the game they went by the Bear Bryant statue outside Bryant-Denny Stadium. Someone had put a Newton jersey on it.

Alabama still had most of its best players from the '09 title team, and the game started like a 'Bama fan's wildest wish. It was 21--0 Tide after the first quarter, 24--0 halfway through the second. What's better: winning your own title, or denying your worst enemy theirs?
Then Tide running back Mark Ingram broke loose on a 41-yard reception down the right sideline, headed for another six—but Auburn defensive end Antoine Carter caught him from behind and punched the ball out. If it had gone out-of-bounds, Alabama ball. If it had kicked to the left, there'd have been a scramble. But it tightroped the sideline, rolled into the end zone, and Auburn fell on it for a touchback.
And right there, everything tilted—the game, the season, all those nesting worlds pressure-sealed into four quarters played once a year. Alabama led 24--7 at the half, but you could feel the Tigers coming, and it was almost no surprise early in the fourth when Auburn went up for good 28--27. Newton threw for three touchdowns and ran for another. Updyke and Barnes had booked a room for the night but drove back instead. They didn't say 10 words all the way to Dadeville. Barnes let Updyke out at the lake house and went on home to Florida.

The Iron Bowl took place on the day after Thanksgiving. Two months later, on the afternoon of Jan. 27, Updyke called the Paul Finebaum sports-talk radio show out of Birmingham.

This is what followed:

Finebaum (nervous laugh): O.K., well, that's fair.

Al: I put Spike 80DF in 'em.

Finebaum: Did they die?

Al: Do what?

Finebaum: Did. They. Die?

Al: They're not dead yet, but they definitely will die.

Finebaum: Is that against the law, to poison a tree?

Al: Well, do you think I care?
In April, Gary Keever, a horticulture professor at Auburn, stopped by Toomer's Corner on his bike to check on the trees. Normally, in spring, Southern live oaks are budding. Instead, Toomer's Oaks were shedding. Keever called a guy from landscaping, and together they scooped leaves into a five-gallon bucket. Keever wanted a few to analyze at the lab. But even more, he didn't want the leaves to blow down the street because they could potentially damage other plants.
Spike 80DF blocks photosynthesis. When it gets into the leaves of a tree, the chlorophyll can't absorb the energy already in the leaves. The loose energy then destroys the leaves from the inside. They yellow around the edges and eventually fall off. The tree goes into survival mode. It puts out another set of leaves, then another—every three to five weeks—until the tree runs out of stored energy. Most times, once the poison is in deep, there's not much anyone can do. Eventually the tree gives up.
Spike 80DF has little or no effect on people and animals. It is manufactured to murder plants. Ranchers use it to clear fence lines; road crews use it to clear highway shoulders. A four-pound bag can kill an acre of brush. Keever thinks Updyke dumped a whole bag into the soil around Toomer's Oaks. When the initial lab tests came back on Feb. 9, the level of Spike in one soil sample was 500 times what it takes to kill a tree.

Auburn's schools of agriculture and forestry are full of authorities on trees and soil and herbicides. Almost immediately after the poison was discovered, a group of more than a dozen professors, plus some outside experts, decided to soak the ground with liquid charcoal, hoping it would bind to the poison. Then they put down tarps to keep the roots from taking in Spike with rainwater. Next they decided to change out the soil. Crews dug as deep as four feet down, washed the roots as clean as they could and sucked up the slurry. They repacked the holes with fresh soil. Not long after, the tree on the College Street side started turning yellow.

The tour guide talked about Toomer's Corner, rolling the oaks and the poison in the trees. "The trees are doing O.K., but we don't know if they're going to make it," she said. "Even if they don't, we'll continue the tradition."

She paused.

"I'm not sure how."

He said somebody whacked him in the face outside a convenience store when he stopped to buy a bottle of green tea. No one stepped forward as a witness. The staff said they didn't know anything had happened until the Opelika police showed up.

Finebaum started taking callers, and the callers ripped Threatt for letting Updyke on the air.

"I don't know what you do for a living," Threatt answered one caller. "I doubt I'd get on the radio and criticize your work. But I can say that my intention was for Harvey to be humanized."

A few weeks later, Threatt filed a plea for Updyke: not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

Let me tell you the true story," Harvey Updyke says.

He was sitting there at the Iron Bowl, he says, watching Auburn rapidly fill in that 24--0 hole, when he started talking to a stranger next to him. "A kid, 30 years old at the oldest." The stranger said he was going to poison Toomer's Oaks with Spike. Harvey says he had never heard of Spike and had barely heard of the oaks.

"I swear on a Bible, all that is true," he says.

This is how, Updyke explains, he knew enough to call the Finebaum show and describe exactly what happened to the trees. Barnes, who was sitting on the other side of Updyke, says he never saw or heard that conversation. But, he says, he and Updyke didn't pay much attention to each other. They both had headphones on so they could follow the game on the radio.

"But if we stay [for the trial] in Lee County [Ala.], I would bet the farm that they're gonna put me in jail," he says.

He has lost 24 pounds and now weighs 209. He grew a beard, shaved it off and then grew a mustache. But people still recognize him. On June 10, driving back through Alabama after another pretrial hearing, he stopped at a sporting goods store to get one more Alabama decal for his car. A Crimson Tide fan pestered him until Updyke agreed to let him take a picture. He told the guy not to post it on the Internet. He expects to see it there any day now.

His lawyer got the judge to approve his move to Louisiana so he could be close to his youngest daughter and her six-month-old girl, Updyke's 18th grandchild.
He loves Alabama football as much as ever. The only thing different is that he knows he can't go back for home games; he'd be too much of a distraction. But the Tide plays at Ole Miss on Oct. 15. That game's not too far from his house in Louisiana. Updyke plans to be there. He wants the court date to hurry up and arrive. He hates what he has brought upon his family. Crimson, he says, is a wreck. Everybody else is worried too. He talks on the phone with Bear a lot. After all these months, Bear still doesn't understand why his father might go to prison over this.

"He keeps telling me, 'These people are acting like this is a tragedy,'" Updyke says. "And I just say, Well, yeah, it is."

Bear's 30 now and just got out of the Air Force. He tries to explain his dad. Harvey loves to talk trash, but he gets annoyed if you trash-talk him. He plays a lot of cards and haunts the Tider Insider message board. He once let a woman and her daughter stay at their house in Texas one night because the woman was driving drunk. He gave his son a clock inscribed with a Bear Bryant quote, and Bear can recite it from memory: IF YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF AND HAVE DEDICATION AND PRIDE—AND NEVER QUIT, YOU'LL BE A WINNER. THE PRICE OF VICTORY IS HIGH BUT SO ARE THE REWARDS.

"I've been in the military," Bear says. "I've seen people die. If the trees die, I will feel bad, yes, but I'm gonna get sleep. If he is rightly convicted in a court of law ... punishment fits the crime, that's all I'm asking for."

Greg Britt was a first-grader at the tail end of the 1960s. His dad was getting his Ph.D. at Auburn, and his grandmother was the house mom for a fraternity. It was safer to leave kids alone back then. The oaks were Greg's playground. He romped around on the trees while his dad studied and his grandmother worked. Britt lives in Mexico City now. On football Saturdays he put the Auburn game on the TV and a Toomer's Corner webcam on his computer, and when the Tigers won, he watched fans roll the oaks from 1,200 miles away.

Kristi and Dennis Barker stopped by Toomer's Corner after their wedding in 1994. They hadn't planned the visit, but the oaks were on the way to the reception, and a friend had left them a spare roll of TP after decorating their car. So the Auburn grads rolled the oaks on their wedding day.

We should be used to this dual existence. Sports, so often, make two out of one.

Put a broken-down trooper far from his childhood and he's harmless. Set him near the team he's always loved—and even nearer to the team he hates—and he becomes a villain.
What hurts Updyke most is that Alabama turned on him. Tide coach Nick Saban said whoever poisoned the trees "does not represent our institution, our program, or our fans in any way." Alabama fans raised $50,000 to help save the oaks. Auburn fans later raised money for April's tornado victims in Tuscaloosa. The feuding families have found a bit of common ground.

Then again, football season hasn't started yet.

Trees die slowly. Auburn will allow people to roll the oaks this fall, but the TP will be removed by hand. The trees are surrounded by guardrails. You can't touch them.

Right now, in the midst of a green Southern summer, the trees are nearly as brown as November. The Magnolia Avenue tree leans to one side. The College Street tree bears an old wound from a drunk driver. The oaks look as if you could just about pull them out with your hands.