Fall Apples

On our farm we had many apple trees that were planted by the man who owned the farm before us. By the time I was was growing up these they were mature apple trees that produced regularly each year. We had apples from spring until late fall; different varieties, all good and with their own unique flavors. Mama seemed to work throughout the growing season to preserve as many of these apples as she could.  When she had too many to process or she got tired of ifor free. 

Lidgie was the farm hand who helped us and Uncle Rector during busy farm seasons. He often took apples home with him, but he especially liked the apples from one particular tree, the sweet delicious apple.  It was located near our house and was among our favorites too.  Mama often made apple dumplings from this tree.  But one summer we had a very severe thunderstorm which blew down the sweet apple tree.  It was too damaged to save so Lidgie was asked to cut the tree up into firewood.  He worked days getting this tree chopped up, all the while making comments about how much he would miss this apple tree.

Two or three years passed and Lidgie was still talked about this tree.  By now the wood from the tree had been used up.  He would often say, "I shore do miss that sweet apple tree; it was my favorite." 

Several years later, near Thanksgiving, Lidgie came to our house carrying two hand-made brooms and two 'jar mops' which were used to clean canning jars for canning.  Lidgie said,  "I want to give you and your Uncle Rec one of my brooms and one of my jar mops."  We were surprised because Lidgie did not 

give gifts even at Christmas. He also said, "Look at the handles on the broom and mop." "Them's made from the sweet apple tree that blew down three years ago."  The handles were whittled down perfectly, no splinters and no knots.  Running our hands over the handles we could see the mountain skills he possessed.  Then Lidgie said, "I just couldn't stand to see the wood be burned up as firewood so I saved some of it."  "It now is well dried out so I made the brooms and jar mops for you'al because I thought it would allow the tree to still live in a new form."  

Many years later when we cleaned out Mama's house the broom and jar mop were still among her things. Lidgie was right; they had lived on long after both Mama and Lidgie.