Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
And there were always apples, real apples. I think they must make apples
in factories nowadays. They taste like it. These were real ones, picked
off the trees. Out at grandpap's they had bellflowers, and winesaps, and
seek-no-furthers, and, I think, sheep-noses, and one kind of apple that
I can't find any more, though I have sought it carefully. It was the
finest apple I ever set a tooth in. It was the juiciest and the spiciest
apple. It had sort of a rollicking flavor to it, if you know what I
mean. It certainly was the ne plus ultra of an apple. And the name of it
was the rambo. Dear me, how good it was! think I'd sooner have one right
now than great riches. And all these apples they kept in the apple-hole.
You went out and uncovered the earth and there they were, all in a big
nest of straw; and such a gush of perfume distilled from that pile of
them that just to recollect it makes my mouth all wet.
They had a big red apple in those days that I forget the name of. Oh, it
was a whopper! You'd nibble at it and nibble at it before you could
get a purchase on it. Then, after you got your teeth in, you'd pull and
pull, and all of a sudden the apple would go “tock!” and your head would
fly back from the recoil, and you had a bite about the size of your
hand. You “chomped” on it, with your cheek all bulged out, and blame
near drowned yourself with the juice of it.
Noon-time the girls used to count the seeds:
“One I love, two I love, three my love I see;
Four I love with all my heart, and five I cast away.
Six he loves; seven she loves; eight... eight...”
I forget what eight is, and all that follows after. And then the others
would tease her with, “Aw, Jennie!” knowing who it was she had named
the apple for, Wes. Rinehart, or 'Lonzo Curl, or whoever. And you'd
be standing there by the stove, kind of grinning and not thinking of
anything in particular when somebody would hit you a clout on your back
that just about broke you in two, and would tell you “to pass it on,”
and you'd pass it on, and the next thing was you'd think the house was
coming down. Such a chasing around and over benches, and upsetting the
water-bucket, and tearing up Jack generally that teacher would say,
“Boys! boys! If you can't play quietly, you'll have to go out of doors!”
Play quietly! Why, the idea! What kind of play is it when you are right
still?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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