Orange Trees

I love oranges.  I love the smell while peeling one.  My grandmother lived near the Sunkist plant and the whole area smelled like summer time.  I love the taste.  It is like fresh morning dew on a cool summer’s day.  I love to bite into the orange, feeling the pulp and juice slide over my tongue.

I grew up across the road from an orange grove.  Every time I wanted an orange, I could just reach up and take one.  It was like magic, having access to an orange anytime I wanted.  Mr. Cooper had the whole grove of oranges, but they weren’t that great for climbing.  Climbing was the walnut trees.  They were more sturdy than the orange trees, with branches like open arms. 

Out back of the Cooper farm, we built a fort using an old truck bed and extra boards.  I was maybe eight when we built it.  Old Mrs. Cooper helped us.  I call her "Old Mrs. Cooper," but I have no idea how old she was.  She was Mr. Cooper’s mother.  She had to be old because Mr. Cooper was old already, older than even my father who was pretty old himself.  Maybe 38 or so. So if my dad was about 38, and Mr. Cooper was maybe 40, that would make her about my age now.  I’m not so old. But she will forever be marked in my mind as really old.  So Old Mrs. Cooper  helped us build the fort, even putting a tarp over the fort to keep any rain out.  We had radio parts and places to sit.  We played there every day in summers for years.

The last irrigation ditch ran right along side the front of the fort and one summer we dug out the curve there and played in the water every time the migrant workers watered the fields.  Mr. Cooper owned all the acres, but leased them out to some company.  I don’t know what/who or even what they grew.  But the workers were so kind to us as we played in that ditch.

When I was in high school, I would hang out at the fort, climbing up the tree above it.  The best access was through the roof.  And I would sit in that tree and write angst-ridden teenage poetry.  I loved the fort.  My dog, Dodger, would lay around down on the fort floor, waiting for me to come down.  Then we would rush over to the front of Cooper’s farmhouse and the two of us would climb the pepper tree.  Ever seen a dog climb a pepper tree?  It was great 🙂  Unfortunately they tore down the fort when Mr. Cooper sold the farm and acres and they put up a school and a housing tract, putting in a street where that last irrigation ditch used to be.

So I grew up with is wonderful magical orange grove and could just go pick the fruit off the branches anytime I wanted.  When I first got married in 1969, I went shopping and wanted to buy some oranges.  I had no idea how to select one from a bin.  I tried to look like I knew.  I squeezed them, sniffed them but finally I gave up and just bought some.  They were okay–some were better than others.

Friday I went to the grocery and wanted to buy an orange.  I have not been able to eat them for many years; those wonderful sunshine fruit upset my stomach.  I wonder if they upset Old Mrs. Cooper’s stomach?  I picked up one and smelled the sunshine, anticipating the joy of liquid summer going down my throat.  And I discovered the truth.  Forty-three years after my first attempt, I still don’t know how to select an orange from the bin.

peace~~