Rows down you could see different apple trees; some laden with ripe fruit, and others picked dry.
My littlest sister so overly excited, letting out little screams and squeals of joy and as soon as I hand her a bag, and she's off running to the closest tree she can find.
"Abigail! Stop! You need to wait for the rest of us!" I call to her, being her caretaker for the moment for the fact that our parents were busy getting out extra coats and other paraphernalia from our car.
She stops in her tracks and looks back at the rest of us, impatient in getting to her picking.
Finally, with the final slam of a car door, she takes off again, force me to chase after her as our father yells at her to stop.
October was apparently not the best time to come. All of the fruit closest to the ground was picked already, requiring my dad and myself to grab the fruit from the highest branches, or holding down the branches themselves so that Abigail wouldn't lose interest or become frustrated.
My mother is driven to find the Golden Delicious apples, and as we all pile back into the car--my bag the fullest while my sisters have only two or three--we try to find the lanes that the apples are supposedly on.
"We have to find Sauce Lane, then look to the left." My mother murmurs to my father, steering in him in the right direction.
But the farther we go along the road, (well, it's more like a gravel strewn giant pothole) we find that all of the Golden Delicious are nowhere to be found.
"Where are they?" Abigail asks, peering out the window, eager to start her picking again.
"They're all hiding from you." I said.
"Hey!" she cries to me, knowing I'm joking but taking it as an insult.
I just roll my eyes at her, but she's already preoccupied in where my dad has parked where the allegedly seen apple was hanging.
We all pile back out, wandering aimlessly through the fruitless trees.
"There aren't any here!" I cry across the field.
"We'll find some!" my mother calls back, somewhere northeast of me.
I roll my eyes at the air, knowing we won't find any for the simple fact that the signs posted on the trees tell us that they were ready the second week of October, meaning that they're already long gone.
Finally, my mother gives up when my sister Abigail gets frustrated without the apples, and we head back to our original spot, or the spot closest we could find.
My sisters and I stumble upon a good fruit tree, but it's up high enough that I scale the tree to grab as many as I can within my reach.
"I need a bag!" I called down.
Just as my mother reaches me and I throw them in, she turns and stumbles.
As she's trying to catch her balance, and apple is thrown from under her foot and she falls.
Although shock contorts my face because I was convinced I would have been the first to fall, my mother starts cracking up as my father helps her up.
"That's the second time you've fallen?" he asks, a smile on his face.
"The second time? Where was I the first time?" I ask, jumping from the tree.
No one pays any attention to me as we head to the next tree. I jump to grab an apple for my other sister, Olivia, then stumbled and land on my side.
Just like a fat person in a movie, I roll down the hill and land on my butt, with all the apples I had gotten still in hand.
I'm laughing and so is my whole family around me, my mom the hardest of all because she had seen the whole thing.
"You okay?" She asks, just short of my dad asking me the same thing.
"Fine." I say, as my mom helps me up.
I brush myself off, happy I hadn't gotten any crushed apple in my clothing or hair.
After things are all said and done, we climb back into the car with two bulging bags of apples and head down to the little town and village they had set up.
Most of the buildings were built in the 1800's, and the woman's bathroom was even a horse stable. It showed because the bathroom stalls had the doors you see in old western moves for the bars, except it only swung one way--outward.
After we were finished, my mother decided she just had to go into the 'Country Store' and look around.
After ambling around for a while, she ended up getting apple butter, raspberry preservatives, an apple cutter, a box of apple crisp, carmel apple makings, and four bags of apple chips.
My sister started to get antsy, so I brought her out and sat her on the benches that line what looked like an entertaining center. After sitting there for a good ten minutes, we grabbed lunch and headed back to our car, eating it on another bench that sat just beyond the apple groves.
Before this day I had always assumed apple groves were a thing of fantasies. Other families did it besides us, and mysteries clung to the dew drenched apples. Where wonderful things happened with only the muted apples for witness.
And perhaps, if nothing else, the apples made something happen that day where everyone got along and there where no harsh, raised words spoke.
Maybe the apples gave their own sprinkle of magic in things we call good luck.
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