Apple Dumplings

Mom and I were heading back to South Carolina and decided to avoid the drudgery of the interstate and ventured onto a backroad following the rail road tracks. Still without a GPS and carrying along my bad sense of direction, this could have turned into another tale of Lost in Georgia; however it became more of a venture down Memory Lane than either of us could have imagined.

Trees with foliage turning gold and red with bits of summer's green lined each side of Highway 278 and we drove past fields of hay, cows and horses. A small abandoned town boasted dilapidated shacks, barns and an old two story house, desipte broken windows and sagging roof, that must have really been something long ago.

The road spilled into small town after small town. We drove into downtown Crawfordville and I pointed out the old bank, still in use, that my former college roommate used to work at during the summers. It still had gleaming wood counters with the "cages" that the tellers would perch behind, ready to assist with transactions. It was sad to see that the downtown area had become so deserted over the past 18 years. As Mom and I talked about my roommate's father, who owned a dairy farm, she wondered if he was still there.

Mom started to reminisce about her childhood in New England, a time when her best friends were also her cousins and the best place to be was her grandmother's old farm. Years later, when my best friends, who were also my cousins, would play on the remains of that farm, we had no idea that the ghosts of our parent's childhood had already been there first. The trees in the apple orchard that we climbed, or the gigantic rock in the side yard that we dared each other to jump to the soft grass below, or the patch of woods to explore at the property line...other children had been there before us.

Mom revealed that she and Kathy used to climb the apple trees and described how each of them had their "own" tree. I smiled because my friends and I did this in New Jersey when we were younger. As my mother continued, I realized that the similarities in childhood tales ended there. She and Kathy had designated "rooms" in each tree. One tangled area became the bedroom, another the kitchen, and a third area the dining room. They would play "house" in their respective trees which were located side-by side. But they had also designated one gnarled branch the "bathroom". From that branch they would perch and would pee and watch it dribble to the ground. But my six-year old mother and her best friend cousin did not stop there. If the urge came over them, they would also perch on the "bathroom" branch and watch each other's dumplings fall to the ground below. With tears in her eyes, my Mom laughed and speculated that there must have been a shortage of apple leaves in that area of the tree.

My grandmother sold her portion of the farm and her house six years ago when she left Boston for the warmer weather of South Carolina. And with the death of my aunt in the summer, the original house and remaining land was sold. The apple orchard has been gone for years, buried beneath the planting of a new house as the city and suburbs crept into what once was the country. It has been a long time since I drove up Granite Street and I wonder if I would be able to recognize anything tangible from the past. But now, thanks to my mother, I have one more memory from that apple orchard to share, courtesy of the original Apple Dumpling Cousins.