Strawberries.
The word, in addition to activating my salivary glands, elicits the smell of earth, early sunshine on the long rows, and stooping or squatting to pick seemingly endless strawberries to fill the endless wooden, slatted quart boxes - none of this cardboard stuff then! Our reward - a nickel a box! and many strawberries in said bellies! Our neighbor raised strawberries and seven daughters and come May/June - those two entities went head to head. A pleasant retrieve from picking was tending the strawberry stand artlessly set up on a card-table in front of the house which was situated along a busy highway. It seems to me the quart boxes may have sold for 50 cents a pop! Car after car pulled into the narrow stony space in front of the walled yard to scarf up the early summer goodies. I bought a quart of strawberries for $6.00 this morning at my suburban farmers market.
Yes, I want to support the local farmers.
No, I don't want to support larceny.
Yes I want to relive the burst of childhood culinary sweetness.
No, I don't want to resent paying what I can, but feel is craziness!
Now if I were in Lancaster, PA, I would drive way out in the country, by the plowed fields, rushing creeks, and rambling barns and farmhouses, and would buy the earth's goodness at a God-fearing price!
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