David and theurj.

In the 40's and 50's in New England in the fall, the apple man would drive the neighborhood streets - MacIntosh apples. I remember him driving up the driveway and offering a sample. He would grip an apple in both hands and twist, yielding two halves - impressive. To a young mouth, those were good tasting.

t, you may also have had milk and bread delivered to your door, as we did, on a regular basis. Maybe an inch of cream floating at the top of the glass bottle.

Ok, a nostalgic flood - remember when oleomargarine first came out? Well, we'd get the product and the yellow die, I believe, in a soft plastic bag, and we would kneed the bag until the color was evenly dispersed. Funny, eh.

In high school, for parts of a summer or two, I also picked strawberries. we could take a bus that the farmer sent around, and my neighbor and I did that, but we also rode our bikes a few times at least. I can't quite believe my eyes when I look at a map now from Lake Oswego, Oregon to Aurora, Oregon - it's so far. Could it really have been Aurora, as I remember? Hah. Those were 1959 or older bicycles. And back home, at the end of the day. We would start pedaling in the early dawn.

Ate so many strawberries, I may still have some aversion :)

But we didn't really hike 10 miles through deep snow to a one-room school house, did we?

My dad worked for one of the first cable tv companies. Their giant satellite dish was located at the edge of town in the woods, as we called them. During harvest season my whole family would go out there to pick the huckleberries, from which my mom would make the best pies. Ah, berry memories...

Uhmm, Mamma's huckleberry pie!

And DM, you're so right about the difference between in-season cared-for local fruit and mass-grown shipped to great distance.

I can hardly believe the difference between tomatoes eaten right off the home vine and those from a typical store - different critters.