Apple Picking

by Sharon Obelsky

 We usually went to Applecrest Farm in Hampton Falls,N.H. the last week of September. If you waited too long into October, the best would be already picked and a lot would be on the ground. The day would dawn clear with just a little touch of cool weather but you knew by afternoon it would be much warmer. It was always best to dress in layers and definitely wear boots, the mud is pretty bad in the orchards. I would wear jeans, socks, boots, tee shirt, sweatshirt hoodie or a light jacket. Paul had a special outfit for this occasion; a flannel plaid shirt, leather vest, cowboy hat and buckle, jeans, cowboy boots and he’d bring his guitar. He always made an effort to talk with the band first and see if he could join in for a few songs. He had a guy from Lynn, Henry the hatter, who custom made his cowboy hat and he found the belt and vest at the Topsfield Fair. We would meet everyone at a certain spot off route 95 going onto route one and continue on together up to Applecrest. 

 One time I remember videotaping our ride up the road that leads to the farm. Paul was driving and we had our song from John Denver, “Take Me Home Country Roads”. There were beautiful, typical New England homes, wood clapboard with colored shutters and bright doors, some red with pumpkins and corn husks at the doorway. There were rock walls lining their yards from the road, American flags hanging from poles or posts off the houses and big old barns and white picket fences. The line of cars would start as soon as we turned off route 1 and winded its way to the farm. We’d pull into the parking lots, per se, for actually they were fields that had already been harvested. 

We’d unload and set out to the spot to pay for bags to be used for the apples we’d pick. On the way, we’d stop off at the band stage and of course they welcomed Paul to join them after we got our apples. 

There were hay-wagons to ride out to the orchards and it was fun bouncing and jouncing along the muddy fields. I always picked the Cortland apples, they were the best for pies that I made from my great grandmother Abby’s recipe. We’d have everyone back for coffee, pie and ice cream later. Paul had made this special picker that reached higher up in the trees where we couldn’t reach, he should have patented it like the pooper scooper he had made before they were invented. 

After putting the apples back in our cars and shedding a layer, since it had gotten warmer, we would head back to the festival, now in full swing. Paul would now grab his guitar and join the group on stage and we’d all sing along and clap to the music. Afterwards there would be hot apple cider and warm cider doughnuts. What a gorgeous September day it had turned out to be, with white puffy clouds, deep blue sky, with a touch of summer fighting off the chilly hint of fall to come that we had felt earlier. The stage would be decorated with cornstalks, ribbons, pots of fall mums and pumpkins.

 We all would drive back to our house, the guys would go down cellar to play some darts and the girls and kids would stay up in the kitchen. We’d make a couple of pies, filling the house with the wonderful smell of apples and the anticipation of the slices to come. The girls would bring their pie pans so they could bring one home with them. I always had this feeling of contentment after days like these. I read something once, “ I’d like a do over”. It fit for a day like this one, a day filled with good times, good friends and good weather

Septemeber

by Gail Balentine

“Sigh … there goes another summer, Snoopy!”

-       Charlie Brown

Where did the summer go? A familiar question and the responses vary. Time passes quickly, especially when we’re trying to cram in lots of warm-weather fun – trips near and far, get-togethers with family and friends, the beach, barbecues, corn on the cob, strawberry shortcake, and maybe a summer book or two. Or, for the more ambitious, warm-weather projects, gardens, or house repairs.

However we filled our days, we’re moving quickly toward Fall now. It’s been a long time since I attended school, but when I think September I want to rush out and buy notebooks and pens. No matter, I still want to start something. Unfortunately, I have too many examples in my house of September Starts and November Abandons.

So what can we look forward to as the seasons change? Let’s see, there will still be some warm days and cool nights – comfortable “sweater weather”. Topsfield Fair, Church Fairs and the Springfield Exposition. Cider donuts, apple pies, sparkling red, orange and golden leaves rippling in the breeze. Kids off to school and activities. Football. Long holiday weekends and, of course, Thanksgiving.On reflection, it seems to me that if we have to say goodbye to summer, New England is a wonderful place to do it!

“Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting                                         

and autumn a mosaic of them all.”

-       Stanley Horowitz

  

Summer Wear

by Beth Alexander Walsh

At the beginning of the summer I did something I haven’t done in years. I bought a pair of white pants. Capri length to be exact. They were on the JC Penny website on sale and I had a coupon. They were just begging to be purchased. For the longest time I shied away from the white. Darker colors could hide a multitude of ample sins that have I have collected over the past two decades. There was also the risk of white. I would be a walking bullseye for BBQ sauce, red wine or any other stain that would become impenetrable by the hardiest of laundry detergents.

The first time I wore the white, my dog jumped up and placed two paws on my thigh in hopes of me sharing my scrambled eggs. She had just been outside and the outside was on my pants in the shape of paw prints. The pants had been on less than thirty minutes. As I changed into the darker pair of pants, I made rules about the white. I would wear on special occasions. I would put them on right before the special occasion. I would take them off as soon as the special occasion was over.

The first time I actually made it out of the house with the white pants was at a family get together. I got compliments on my attire, and I managed not to spill anything on myself during the entire gathering. I was loving my new white pants. As soon as they came out of the laundry, I would think about when I could wear them next. They went on several dinners, a few music venues, a night out with friends and of course vacation. Then, in a blink of an eye, it was Labor Day weekend. I wore the pants to an outdoor bar with my husband and our pup. She of course put her paws on my thigh adding a grey streak of parking lot gravel on the bright white material. My pants were having a déjà vu moment. I was unperturbed by the assault because I knew that this was the last outing for “white” and then I got sad. Not only was summer over but on reflection I surmised that I had worn my pants less than a dozen times over the season. They had spent more time hanging in my closet waiting for a special occasion than on my body.

Why do we wait to use items we purport to love?

Both my mother and mother-in-law had new towels in a closet for when company might be staying. They were never used. Not once. My mother’s towels got passed to my nieces and nephews going off to college. I wish she could have enjoyed them herself.

I am making some new rules.

Use the towels. Wear the good jewelry. Eat off the nice plates. Wear the damn white pants.

Alle Benchoff

Shore Country Day School

Grade 8

Night

Sonnet

Unlucky cat black fills the silent sky

The color of absolute emptiness

Freezing cold air lets out a subtle cry

From the house comes one light, a friendliness

One world goes to sleep, another one wakes

Owl flies, 'coon steals, bat blends with silent sky

And the moon lives alone and his heart breaks

He has no escape he can't even die

He watches the light, the one from the house

And this one light is the last one awake

The light is me, awake late like a mouse

These hours, like thin glass, I'm about to break

The night is empty, yet the night is full.

Fight through the night and you will see the light

Gareth Buhl

Waring School

Grade 12

Looking in at an Old Friend’s Wake

I fumble at my tie knot

Wavering between

Respectful and breathless.

Aware that I know no one here

Except the widow

And the boys,

I wait quietly in line

And bite my fingernails.

In the corpse-room (what is it called?)

Relatives stand as islands,

I tread water,

Visitor, voyeur,

Between them

Alone.

Do they feel throttled also

By charcoal tiles

Waves of slate curtains

And grey landscapes?

I heard drowning is peaceful—

This is not.

I wish her clumsy wishes,

Wait watery and useless

Choked at the closed casket, uncertain.

There’s a bible and knee-rests

But I’m not a catholic.  

I don’t pray.

A look over my shoulder: countless

In line await approach.

So I pass on.

Neither of the boys cry,

In their eyes is not him but

Bloated slack face and

Slate hands, briny

Battered washed up blue

Bruised and brackish.

Light and distant,

I can silently slip into sun

And air.

I do.

(Take a story with me,

Leave a body behind)

Inside they still tread water.

Jordie Cornfield

Waring School

Grade 8

sleepy, gold cliches

You’re a tired cliche

A red rose or

A yellow sun

That’s dripping

In broken promises

And jumped-to

Conclusions.

You’re a love song

That belt-outs something like

‘You’re the only reason I wrote this song,

When you’re here, nothing’s wrong’

Something must be wrong, though

If the artist is depending on

Another person for

Their happiness and satisfaction.

Or a RomCom movie where

Girl likes boy, boy likes another girl

Who’s blonde or rich or both

And by the end of the movie,

Miraculously,

The original awkward girl who had

A make-over halfway

Through the movie

And the cool jock whose main goal in life

Is a basketball scholarship to UCLA

are together.

You’re a tired cliche

That I’m sick of hearing

On and on and on.

You’re the girl wearing pink

Or the boy wearing blue

You’re everything everyone hates

But they don’t know anything else.

Their heads too small,

Or their pants too tight

Somehow the oxygen

Can’t reach the part of their

Brain that’s groping for the button

That tells them to

Run, run, run.

But my head is the right size

And my dress is floral and pretty.

So I can see

That you’re a tired cliche

You’re a diamond in the rough

Or something weird like that.

It’s a small world,

So many people like you.

Ah, to be young and foolish

That’s a cliche too.

It’s kind of sad

But,

Only if you’re old,

An old soul, you’d know

All that glitters is not gold.

Elizabeth Patrick

Waring School

Grade 12

Oranges

At christmas time the box arrives,

same as last year same as next.

The cheap wood, with one dimensional colors;

Orange and Green. Together, simple depictions of

“Florida’s Freshest.” Telling us what we already know.

The box alerts me to my carelessness,

Reminds me of my grandmother, far away.

She thinks of me frequently,

I think of her many fewer days.

When we rip open the box my siblings and I,

Some green paper strips fall to the floor.

They fight over strawberry candy, scarce in fake grass packaging.

An Orange is enough for me.

Griffin Wells

Waring School

Grade 10

The Biggest Question Ever

My brother and I are shuddering in front of the space heater,

wiping the Carmex stains off of the Scholastic: One Thousand

Questions About Dinosaurs book so we can

leaf thru and find the page where there are big letters

that tell us when the Earth will be engulfed by the sun,

and life as we know it will cease to exist.

At night we sweat and stick our fingernails into the drywall

thinking about…how it will finally feel

for our 5 billion year old skin to Touch!

the Sun! time to replace our bodies with camera metal

and apply that intergalactic SPF twenty zillion.

Uncle Jeff flicks the mala beads hanging in front of his dashboard

while we repeat “Wenus!” and tug our elbows and laugh until our tailbones hurt.

But I stop laughing when I catch a grimace

from that unswollen sun, sweetening

the apricot tree in his front yard.

Raphael Clark

Shore Country Day School

Grade 8

Over Liquid Glass

Over swells and troughs, fly, the surface

A pane of glass, slicing sheer speed,

Hands both raw and sliced with salt.

On ropes above the drink.

Lean out, keep it straight,

Pull in the sheets

Double speed,

Straight we

Sail.