October Apple Mess, 1977

(10/2000)

The first day of October in Washington, DC . It turns my mind to nostalgia for some reason. I guess it's because the activities of summer suddenly calm down and the mind can take a rest.

And in this mental rest I recall Octobers past:

Andy Jagel really scared Rob and me one day the first summer after Rob came to Harvard. That was 1977. Andy screamed at us under an apple tree. Did we throw all these apples all over the road and make this mess? Clean this up right now! Andy demanded, his face a contorted tomato of rage. Clean up this f-ing mess right now! When he’d exhausted his lungs with demands and swear words, he departed with his long, loping, downward staring gait.

“Who is that guy?”, asked Rob. “He thinks we did that?”

There was certainly quite a mess of rotten apples all over the road. Something done by an early summer frost or some other anomaly of apple country’s weather. The mess stayed there until a heavy rain weeks later. Rob and I never failed to mock shout at one another whenever we passed that tree. “Clean up this f-ing mess!” we demanded again and again.

There were two miles and twenty or thirty houses between Rob’s house and mine. My family’s house was on Depot Rd., a dead end street with almost constant highway and train noises. The Featherstones were on the town common, on Elm St., surrounded by stately mansions from the 18th and 19th centuries. These homes were watched by the historical commission, which kept records of which houses were originally painted which colors. None of the “officially” historical homes were to be painted any other colors. No one protested. I shouted my disgust at the thought of such restriction upon hearing of it.

“It’s a free country, isn’t it?” I roared. “We should be able to paint houses whatever color we want! If it was my house I’d paint it purple just to show them.”

“No you wouldn’t”, Rob laughed at me.

“Why not?”

“It would look stupid, that’s why not! People would laugh at you. I would too. Anyway it’s our house, not yours. Paint your own house purple.”

“No way! That would look stupid.”

When the Featherstones moved into our town, Rob brought with him mysteries of the northern place called Canada, a place I had for my few short years as being under the ownership of the United States, by virtue of the name “North America” emblazoned across both the northern and southern borders of our country. Naturally this meant we owned Mexico as well. Not only did Rob bring with him the mysterious knowledge of new independent nations to our north and south, but there was also tofu, yoga, psychology, skiing, vacations, laughter. So many things I didn’t imagine even could exist.

Best of all in the early days of our friendship were the puppets. Rob was a puppeteer genius at the age of 9.

(originally written in October 2000)