Fast Fiction

When I was a teen and lived in Pennsylvania there were days like today. Crisp days with puffy clouds. Days with high school football games.

My brother and I would climb on our bikes and pedal out to the orchard up at the edge of town. We would buy a quart or maybe half gallon basket of jonathan apples.

I had a jacket at that time a Woolrich hunting jacket (we called it the dead rabbit jacket because it had a pocket for small dead game) and we would take the apples out of the basket and stow them in my jacket and ride back home.

We’d go to the football games and wander around and eat apples. I wasn’t terribly interested in the game, it was something to do. I don’t think I ever sat in the stands and actually watched it. (Come to think of it, the Mechanicsburg team was division champs or something.)

Jonathan apples are the best. First of all, they’re deep red, not that fake red of delicious apples. Glossy and wonderfully round instead of upright. Great streaks of yellow or orange on one side. Crisp and juicy and tart.

I can’t find good jonathans here in Los Angeles. They’re always tiny ones. There’s a new hybrid called jonagolds, which are good, but not the same. The orchard that we used to buy apples at is gone now. It’s a housing development. That’s how you know you’re old. When trees that were younger than you were cut down to build houses.