Apple Picking

We had surprise fun today-- apple picking in an orchard about an hour north of here, sort of spur of the moment-like. It was too much to resist-- actual apples from actual apple trees. My son had fun picking the biggest fruit, and I found dodging the gynormous hornets that were buried deep in the rotting fruit scattered along under the trees very exciting.

I thought it was good that he see an actual fruit tree, and pick something from it, knowing later when he ate it that it's true-- the Earth gives us what we need in its all-knowing way. Sheer natural perfection.

He definitely enjoyed the pig race as well. Sheer country boredom.

I recall being bored beyond reason when I was young. I spent a lot of time in rural areas, even though I've been living near the city now for over twenty years. Still, the painful afternoons of time creeping by at a snail's pace is something not easily forgotten. Had I had access to pigs, I'm certain that I would have raced them too, and probably dressed them up in funny clothes and trained them to sit still at a tea party in the mud hole. Being an only child in the middle of the sticks is really a practice in the growth of patience. And in imagination. Which explains why I have such a calling for tedious artwork.

Anyway, I wholly recommend taking the youngsters-- and even ourselves-- to a farm where they grow apples, or pumpkins since 'tis the season. It's a bit crowded on the weekends, yes. But the mule drawn hayrides are so fun, and the press of people to buy simple things like apple butter and apple cider is intoxicating. You'd think they didn't offer such commodities in Kroger. And of course, they don't, at this value per actual tastiness.

There's something else you won't find at Kroger, though I'm of a mind that it might be a good thing that you don't. They had a kind of museum-- at least, that was what they were calling it. A Moonshine Museum. You walk along this old converted barn that still carries the stink of a multitude of animals living out their lives there, staring at the ill-painted signs denoting the different kinds of moonshine-making apparati available back when the craze was hitting the mountain folk. And as you shuffle along, you can see where the demarcation occurs after they've run out of examples to show of the main draw, in which case they begin to set up little dioramas of country life 'way back when', with a farming couple sitting around the fire; she with her sewing and he with a pipe in his mouth. Normally these sorts of things are pleasant, drawing in our memories pictures of ancestors and the kinds of lives they must have led when the country was still young and sans electricity.

But in these particular setups, they were apparently operating on a farming budget, because the people were not mannequins or even remote replicas of actual pioneering people. Oh, no. These people were stuffed shirts and pants with straw, with heads made from halfway deflated playing balls, topped with strange and unusual and unmatching masks haphazardly attached to them. The children looked downright freakish, and more than a few of the adults were sporting altered Halloween masks, simply repainted to look more 'normal'. I'm telling you, it was SO creepy!

But the apples were good, and the mules were tolerant of our patting hands, so all in all, an experience to have and to hold. I'll let you know if there are any nightmare flashbacks from the diorama 'country folk'.

Happy Apple Pickin' to you all.