Susan Dlugach was a reporter for the Las Vegas Daily Optic in New Mexico before turning to a career teaching English in New Mexico and California. These days she spends her time folk dancing, doing yoga, and dreaming up stories.
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Juicy Season
Juicy Season
Summertime, Mama drove our two-tone melon colored Plymouth
Belvedere up Memorial Boulevard to the fruit stands to exchange
a few dollars for bags of sweetness. Who needs cookies or candy bars
when the scent of ripeness is in the air?
Did you know scoops of lime sherbet pair perfect in the cantaloupe hollow
where the seeds used to be? Dig into deliciousness that’s better than
Dairy Queen.
And naked bites of peach are pure pleasure inside your mouth, you with
your salt sweaty arm wiping away the juice dribbling out your lips. You eat
it outside on the grass because of ants and Mama … Well, you know.
Peach cobbler, its syrupy goodness bubbly in the pan under a sugared-up
biscuit crust.
Watermelon at Aunt Birdie’s place. Eat big slices of the green rinded red
treat out under the sun bleached sky. See which cousin can spit black
seeds the farthest. Toss the rinds to the hogs. They’ll eat anything.
Speaking of anything, you ever had pickled watermelon rinds? Me neither,
except once .. just to taste. That was enough. But my grandmother didn’t
waste anything. Jars of these always sat among preserved pears, beans
and jellies in her pantry.
Blackberries picked from briers in the woods, washed and sugared, ready
for another cobbler blanketed by a crumbly crust. And oh, those black,
seedy jams … jars and jars of them in the pantry by those watermelon
things. It was years after she passed away before we ran out of that
goodness to spread on buttered toast. It will always be my favorite jam.
~ Susan Dlugach
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