Spo-Reflections on Picking Apples

This time of year I think about Gerry. Gerry was one of those friendships limited to one activity. Men sometimes do this: they have a friend for one thing but not for others. Gerry was ‘my chum with whom I go apple picking’. I don’t remember when this started. We had dated briefly, but we remained friends.

It started one September when he asked me to go pick apples and we continued this yearly event. We didn’t meet up to do anything else for the rest of the year. We would drive out of Chicago to an orchard . I don’t remember the name of the place. It was to the northwest. We would obtain apple sacks and a tool for picking. It resembled a shuffle hoe, but this shuffle hoe was raised up into the tree to clip off apples that hit your head fell into the sack.

We would go early in the autumn, as he wanted Jonathon apples. There were bags of picked apples for sale, but we enjoyed picking them ourselves. Usually the sun was brilliant but a bit cold. The fields were muddy. Afterwards, we sometimes had cider or doughnuts. I usually bought a few gourds and the Hallowe’en pumpkins.

I tried making apple pies from my pickings. The pies never came out. For some reason, my pies were very wet and the insides were like soup, even when cooking them without a top. I still don’t know what went wrong. Any cooks out there that can answer this?

I haven’t been picking apples in15 years and I don’t know what happened to Gerry. As is the wont, when an activity dries up, so does the relationship upon which it is based.

Still, when September rolls around, I think of Gerry and Jonathon apples.

Curious Cures #2 – How to tell when you are dead

Making sure a person is dead is not as easy as it sounds. Nowadays it is complicated by brain wave activities, legal matters, etc. Relatives challenge medical opinion and go to court where a judge decides, not a doctor, if someone is legally dead or not.

In the Middle Ages being sure of death was important as people feared being buried alive. But you didn’t want a body hanging around too long to make sure – putrefaction would set in. So there were a few tricks to make sure someone was dead as a door nail:

Blowing tobacco smoke via a bellows into the anus was sometimes done, to see if a good goose evoked a startle. I read a machine was made to actually do this; the mind boggles…..

Stuffing things up the nose was a common test; salt and pepper were often used. Sometimes pieces of onion, garlic, and horseradish were shoved up the nose in hopes the odor would revive the patient.

Trumpets were sounded in the ears.

Vinegar, salt – even warm urine – were poured into the mouth.

The body was whipped with stinging nettles.

Hot wax was dripped onto the feet

And, my favorite:

The application of a hot poker to the anus to see if the corpse would flinch.