CHAPTER I, Post # 6

Each time there was a news flash on the television we paid attention. Breaking news was just that, breaking news, I expected them to announce Russian missiles were on they’re way. We were urged to build bomb shelters in our backyards and stock them with water and imperishables. Those were paranoid times. And they wonder why I’m a paranoiac?

Farms and farmers still played a large role in the social fabric of eastern Massachusetts. A quarter mile up the street, at the top of the hill was Ryan’s Farm, the only working farm left directly on the lower half of Liberty Street. During harvest time old farmer Ryan sold fruits and vegetables out of a wood slat farm stand beside his house at the top of the hill. My mother would give me a quarter and say, “Bobby, go to Farmer Ryan’s and buy a half dozen apples.” I knew she was baking pies that afternoon. I’d trudge up the hill with a quarter and ask for a six apples.

“What kind?” He’d ask.

“The baking kind.” Visions of apple pies and apple butter danced in my head.

As he got older, if he didn’t have what we wanted stacked behind him in his small stand he send us to the orchards to pick our own. “Just the fruit on the ground. Don’t climb the trees,” he’d admonish. We’d picked our own apples and pears or what ever vegetable was in season, brought them back to the stand and he charged accordingly. He did not have a scale, all business was done by sight and in coins.
Around the bottom of each tree lied scores of fruit in various stages of decomposition. Flies and sweet bees swarmed aound the more decomposed fruit, the sweet smell of rotting fruit.. I wa careful not to step on any of the soggy apples and. Whne I thought farmer Ryan was not looking I’d climb into the trees. More than once, if I couldn’t find enough of the fruit I thought mom wanted, I’d climb up the lower branches. Farmer Ryan’d yell from the top of the hill. “Get down from the trees. You’ll break the branches”

Discarding apples that were too bruised or rotten or wormy, I gather us the best dozen apples available and trudged back to the stand. Pesticides were used sparingly. They were expensive. If Farmer Ryan was not pure eco-green, he was probably more so than many of today’s so-called green stores selling overpriced foods to people with too much money.

“Fifteen cents,” he’d say.

I handed him the quarter.

“Do you have a dime and a nickle?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t have any change. We’ll make it up the next time.” He took out a small pad of paper wet a pencil with the tip of his tongue and wrote the IOU. Then he handed me back my quarter and packed the apples in a paper bag. When I got back home, my mother not wanting to be beholding to anyone gave me the fifteen cents and sent me backup the hill to pay farmer Ryan.