July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Cherry brings back memories (6/18/03)
Dear Reader
The tart first bite exploded in my mouth. You could almost taste the summer sun. And I was a kid again.
One of the trade-offs of living and working in the same little town where you grew up is that while there are plenty of people who still remember you with a runny nose or an untucked shirt as a 10-year-old you’re also subject to these little epiphanies, flashbacks provoked by familiar surroundings or tastes or smells.
Standing behind the garage last weekend, sampling ripening cherries from a tree Connie had planted several years ago, I was suddenly ten, barefoot, and probably in need of a bath.
Each cherry I popped in my mouth, each seed I spit in the air, brought back those distant summers, growing up in the same neighborhood.
We lived on cherries, it seemed, grazing omnivorously from tree to tree, ignoring little things like property rights and harvesting the fruit before the birds could get to it.
In memory, the cherry season stretched for months.
But, in fact, it could only have lasted for a few weeks.
And the time the fruit was truly at its peak was probably just a matter of days.
Still, there was something dreamlike about the way those days passed, when the cares of adulthood never crossed our minds.
The kids in the neighborhood knew all the best trees and kept track of when they would ripen.
Our house had two cherry trees for a while, one which yielded the sweet, tart, yellowish variety and a tall, frustrating bing cherry tree that always seemed to keep its fruit out of my reach.
Its sap-covered trunk made it an uninviting climb.
But my favorite was one down the street, in the side yard of the Pensinger home.
Its branches were eminently climbable, and its crop of summer sweetness seemed to have no end.
One memorable June, my old friend Don Starr and I practically lived in that tree for days, sprawled out on the branches, cool in the shade, and endlessly reaching for another cherry, while a sleepy conversation rambled on with no destination in mind.
It was probably the most carefree time of our lives.
The tree behind our garage is smaller, and my climbing days are long past.
But on a hot summer afternoon, with yard work ahead of me, the cherries couldn’t have tasted better.[[In-content Ad]]
One of the trade-offs of living and working in the same little town where you grew up is that while there are plenty of people who still remember you with a runny nose or an untucked shirt as a 10-year-old you’re also subject to these little epiphanies, flashbacks provoked by familiar surroundings or tastes or smells.
Standing behind the garage last weekend, sampling ripening cherries from a tree Connie had planted several years ago, I was suddenly ten, barefoot, and probably in need of a bath.
Each cherry I popped in my mouth, each seed I spit in the air, brought back those distant summers, growing up in the same neighborhood.
We lived on cherries, it seemed, grazing omnivorously from tree to tree, ignoring little things like property rights and harvesting the fruit before the birds could get to it.
In memory, the cherry season stretched for months.
But, in fact, it could only have lasted for a few weeks.
And the time the fruit was truly at its peak was probably just a matter of days.
Still, there was something dreamlike about the way those days passed, when the cares of adulthood never crossed our minds.
The kids in the neighborhood knew all the best trees and kept track of when they would ripen.
Our house had two cherry trees for a while, one which yielded the sweet, tart, yellowish variety and a tall, frustrating bing cherry tree that always seemed to keep its fruit out of my reach.
Its sap-covered trunk made it an uninviting climb.
But my favorite was one down the street, in the side yard of the Pensinger home.
Its branches were eminently climbable, and its crop of summer sweetness seemed to have no end.
One memorable June, my old friend Don Starr and I practically lived in that tree for days, sprawled out on the branches, cool in the shade, and endlessly reaching for another cherry, while a sleepy conversation rambled on with no destination in mind.
It was probably the most carefree time of our lives.
The tree behind our garage is smaller, and my climbing days are long past.
But on a hot summer afternoon, with yard work ahead of me, the cherries couldn’t have tasted better.[[In-content Ad]]
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