Apples

“Over the river and through the woods…” the lyrics flitted through Shelby’s mind. Whenever she heard this Christmas melody she couldn’t help but think about her paternal grandparents, especially her grandmother Irene.

Shelby was pretty sure her family didn’t cross a river during the hour-long drive to her dad’s childhood home south of Stetsonville, and she knew for certain she and her siblings had never ridden in a sleigh. Still, the song brought to mind Sunday visits that began with a hearty meat-and-potatoes meal, followed by an afternoon of Sheepshead or Pinochle, and games of Scrabble. Sometime after the sun went down, the visit ended with three generations gathered once more around the sturdy oak table, just before her dad and the uncles went outside to warm up the cars that would carry everyone home.

While the mid-day feast featured fried chicken, roast beef, or baked pork chops, the evening spread was always canned ham, sliced for sandwiches, homemade bread and creamy butter, with oatmeal cookies and canned apples for dessert. The canned apples were served from quart canning jars that Grandma Irene brought up from the cellar.

Each year apples grew and ripened on trees that lined the gravel driveway east of the house. The apples were smaller than the ones sold at the grocery store—each one the color of applesauce and  just a bit larger than a marshmallow. The homegrown apples were canned stem and all in a sugary homemade concoction—the recipe not written down, but kept within Irene’s memory. By the time Shelby was deemed old enough to play Scrabble (5th grade) Irene had been canning apples and garden produce for decades.

Irene carried a bouquet of lilacs when she and Grandpa Joe had married in the spring of 1931, less than two years after the Wall Street Crash that kicked off the Great Depression. Shelby’s dad, born in 1936, was their second child of seven—three girls and four boys.

As an adult, Shelby would encounter a photograph of the Irene & Joe's children taken near the apple trees and wonder why there were eight children, arranged from tallest to smallest. Grandma Irene explained that the “extra” one, Janice, was the only child of her sister-in-law, whose husband farmed the place a mile down the road. When Shelby asked why Janice was included, Irene shared that Janice and her mom always came by to help with picking and canning the apples—after all, apple canning was a family tradition.

-rjw