One of the houses that I grew up in was out in the country on an apple orchard.

I have great memories from this house.
I remember learning to drive a manual transmission between the apple trees. I was told not to hit any of the trees.

Hey mom and dad: thanks for the advice. I figured if I could pull that off, I’d be in a good shape.

Another was trying to learn how to drive a motorcycle; which didn’t go too well at all. I ran that Trail 90 straight into the house and knocked the two-story gutter down.
Not my best moment.

One of my favorite memories had to do with “tossing” apples. My dad used to make us get rid off all the “downed” apples before we’d mow the lawn (that way the apples wouldn’t get torn up and caught in the blades). Well, instead of just tossing them across the road into the ditch, we’d wait for cars to speed past and we’d roll those Red Delicious under their car – hoping for an explosion of applesauce.

It happened more often than not, too.

One time in particular stands out, though. Rachel (my sister) and I were in charge of getting rid of the apples and playing our normal game of applesauce when an unfortunate thing happened: Instead of rolling the apple under the car, she hit the side panel of the car as it roared past.

I was gone . . . and obviously much faster than Rachel. I looked back and she was still there. Even as the car slammed on its brakes and slammed into reverse. I called for her, but she was rooted like one our apple trees.

Funny thing is, I can’t for the life of me, remember what happened next. I don’t even know if we got in trouble later when our parents found out . . .

Oh well, the mind is a fragile thing.

One of the most fun things I can remember doing was ice sledding with my grandma Hall. One winter night – we already had a ton of snow – we got freezing rain . . . for hours. When I woke up in the morning to a Snow Day I was extremely happy. The only problem was that my mom told me it was too icy to go anywhere . . . the roads were covered in the dreaded black ice.

You can imagine my surprise when my grandma rolls in about 30 minutes later and wants to go sledding. The top layer of ice/snow was so thick, that as we walked (rather, skated) to the sledding hill behind our house, we didn’t break through the crust.

I remember hopping on my circle sled and going forever.
I mean, I was sledding uphill at one point. It was that icy.
and that awesome.

Another great thing about this house was that we had a great garden. It was full of green beans, cukes, squash, tomatoes, beets and even grapes. Oh yeah, and we lived on an apple orchard and had three varieties of apples whenever we wanted them. We had macs (my favorite), spies, and red delicious (still my least favorite type of apple).

It was a little bit like Utopia or Shagri-La.

And then, for some inexplicable reason, we moved.
the end.

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