Cider and Corvettes
While swamped still, and with the aim of providing more happy stories for folks to read at a time frustrating and difficult for many, another Thanksgiving-written entry, about another autumn afternoon, of good cider and better company. Enjoy. :-)
As with yesterday, today's music too also courtesy of The Companions of St. Cecilia: [mp3].
You could see the excitement dance in Jesse's eyes as soon as the vintage Corvette pulled into sight...
Growing up in Michigan, one of the many fond memories of childhood was heading out to the apple orchards on the northern edge of the Detroit Metro area as the leaves turned color. Once the weather got cool enough to turn our garage into a giant refrigerator, my parents, Gauss and I would head out in our boots (the better to squish through mud) and gloves (to avoid splinters from the three-legged wooden ladders) and our station wagon (the better to haul lots of apples home with) and spend a long, crisp afternoon picking apples.
Autumn always was the best season of the year, perfect for outdoor activities, and strolling amidst acres of apple trees, searching for bushel after bushel of flawless apples one at a time, was a merry way to spend an afternoon. Eating fresh apples straight off the tree. Chucking apples with flaws as far as eight-year-old arms could throw them. Ending the day at the cider mill, watching the forklifts tip giant bins of apples into the grinder, filling huge muselin bags with ground apples, the workers stacking the bags between wooden pallets in the cider press and squeezing gallons of fresh juice out. I don't know whose brilliant idea, once upon a time, it was to combine freshly-fried doughnuts with fresh cider, but it was a delicious way to end an afternoon, driving home with our apples with U. Michigan football on the radio. And then for weeks afterwards, chopping apples with mom in the kitchen, making loads of apple pies from scratch, apple salad, or just plain apples. The apple blossom is the Michigan state flower, and so appropriate was it that apples were such a prominent part of my fond memories of growing up here.
We went virtually every year, without fail, up until I was twelve. The next year, we moved from the home I had known since I was born and began the great adventure that would take me to Pittsford, NY (Locker Ladies), Tokyo (too many stories to highlight), college (ditto!), medical school (eek!), and beyond...
And then after thirteen years and going literally around the world, this fall to the orchards I returned, this time in the company of the merry mathematician, dancer and Corvette aficionado Jesse. :-)
- I don't honestly remember how it was decided we should do this -- we do a lot of fun things pretty much by random, a luxury one has when two friends live just blocks apart -- but straight from dancing on the Diag we went back to her place, stripped off our medieval garb and away, out of the city we went. Ann Arbor is a enclave of high-tech and bio-tech firms and the University, surrounded by the loop formed by US 23 and I-94; beyond that ribbon of concrete lie countryside, rolling hills, lakes strung like pearls, and apple orchards, including Wiard's, the one to which we went.
It was late in the day, and late in the apple-picking season, but we found both time and apples enough. The trees were shorter than I remembered, or maybe it was a perspective change from the last time, thirteen years before. After a jaunty tractor-pulled hay-ride, we strolled through the apple orchards, carefully hunting for flawless apples, eating them off the trees, and having warm, comfortable, quite often silly conversation, as friends are lucky enough to share. One never really needs an excuse for the latter, and to do so amidst the fresh air and crisp skies of that late afternoon only made it that much more enjoyable.
Wiards turns out to be a much larger operation than the orchards I grew up with; indeed, an entire country faire was in full swing, with candy apples and live music and roasting brats and everything else, and so after we'd picked our apples we strolled back amidst the white wood-paneled pavillions and browsed and shopped. We picked up doughnuts, of course, and cider, and pumpkin butter, and candied apples. And it was coming out of Wiard's large country store that Jesse spied the Corvette...
It's the fun little random quirks which give us each our uniqueness; and one of Jesse's is a burning facination with Corvettes, the make of high-powered American sports car, especially in the glory days before emission controls and catalytic converters. I'd known this for a long time, from the way her already ebullient self would twinkle with excitement discussing the finer points of the lineage of vintage Corvettes, or the incredible detail of knowledge she knew. Or the fondness with which Jesse described her late lamented vintage Corvette, which she merrily zoomed around college, until it literally got squashed by another car during a freak tornado on the UMD campus in the fall of 2001. Someday, she declares often, when she gets the money and a garage to store it in, she will once again possess a Corvette, and she knows exactly what kind. And so the moment, as we crossed the little wooden bridge over the creek in front of Wiard's general store, the vintage Corvette convertible pulled into sight to the street in front of us, you could hear the little gasp of excitement, followed moments later by the patter of her sneakered feet as she ran up to the surprised driver, excitedly asking him whether his vehicle was X model year...
She was a little embarassed afterwards, fretting the driver thought she was a psycho. I, grinning, disagreed: hey, if you're driving around a vintage, lovingly restored Corvette with the windows down on a fine autumn day, having cute girls run up to your car is probably part of the entire *point*. ;-)
The day ended with good Indian food at one of the newer Indian restaurants in town, as well as me introducing Jesse to "Use Well the Days", the bonus track from the Return of the King soundtrack, and one of my favorite songs anywhere. (Hooray for the MP3 player built into my med-center issue PDA!) And back to her house and a bow over her hand and that was that, well, at least until the next merry outing -- just days later...
In the days and weeks that followed came other merry events: of Revel Grove, and of Chez Moo, and a grand ball at the Michigan Union that closed a grand circle and a grand autumn for me in many ways, all stories yet to be told. More stories to add to all the previous had since silmaril first introduced Jesse and I. And with luck, they'll still be many stories yet to come, of Wassail, and Twelth Night, and perhaps we will go see the Maple Syrup runs in the late winter, and the coasters of Cedar Point in the early summer -- who knows, who knows? Much mischief to be had, many Thursday dances and random weekends, perhaps also with friends close and friends from far, in a long happy line reaching back to the very first time missysedai first came up here for mischief, and surely will again, and all the many friends who have followed. And somewhere far, far down the line, in a springtime many seasons from now, an early May afternoon at Hill Auditorum...
- Michigan is unusual in bids its MD/PhD candidates to march in the PhD commencement ceremonies not of the year of defense, but two years hence when the MD too is completed. Separate ceremonies the MD and PhD commencements are, in May and June: but one unified ceremony is held for all PhDs of every major department, be they molecular biology or mathematics. 2007 is my completion date, should I make it that far; to graduate in 2007 is also Jesse's hope. And so it may be for me as it was long ago, to march out my academic career with a good friend and partner in things mischevious and merry. Literally by callicrates's side did I recieve my Bachelor's. A merry end would it be for me to recieve my PhD by Jesse's. :-)
