“We’re all only young once; that’s all society can stand.”

Stealing apples again....well, not perzackly stealing ‘em as my nabor wuz standin’ there watching....her only complaint wuz that I wuz taking all the low-hanging fruit ‘n she’d have to figger out how to get the higher ones...I pointed out that her garden tools wuz a ‘hull lot handier to her than they wuz to me ‘n that all she had to do wuz pull the branches down a little bit....’n of course, leave the ones at the top of the tree for the birds ‘n squirrels or whatever wild critters wanted ‘em bad enuff.....(I also promised her a piece of the pie I’m hoping Millyrose’ll make with the ones that I carried home but that’s the price you pay for stealing fruit in the daytime)

In the olden daze...those golden daze of yore...we did our liberating by the light of the moon whether it was apples or watermelons or whatever ‘n I ain’t gonna talk about the whatever cuz some people got long mem’ries ‘n age don’t mellow ever’one....I recall one kind’a moonish nite, a bunch of the boyz wuz whooping it up at Ye Olde LazyBoy Shoppe ‘n someone, don’t remember who, tho’t it’ud be a good idea to hop into a little ol car that just happened to belong to a solid gold member in good standing ‘n go out in the country to a place that had more’n a plentitude of apple trees....the plan wuz that we’d go gather enuff apples to make some apple wine...at least, that’s the way I remember it ‘n I’m the one tellin’ the tale...

Now as I recall, along the way, we ran into a hill so steep that the little ol car wudn’t climb it without we all got out ‘n walked while the solid gold member in good standing that owned the vehicle backed it up the hill....

As to the actual ‘gathering’ of the intended fruit for the purpose of making apple wine, let me just say that somehow by hook or by crook we managed to get a sufficiency of apples but we decided to take another way home...a more circuitous route as I now dimly recall...’n along the way, the vehicle that belonged to the solid gold member in good standing decided that it had gone far enuff for one evening ‘n we wuz forced to walk....

It was a longish way down that hill ‘n out’a that hollow to the winding two-lane blacktop that led back to the safety of South Shore ‘n sumtime in the wee hours of the morning, we got tired ‘n sat down in the roadway determined to wait for a kind-hearted person to pick us up ‘n save our weary feet ~ Now, it wuz one of those coolish fall nites with a little spotty fog here ‘n there ‘n the two-lane blacktop had kept it’s warmth from the long day ‘n being the hardy teenagers with the crystal clear consciences that we all posessed in abundance, we pretty

soon stretched ourselves out ‘n went to sleep...’course, we all came awake at the tortured scream of rubber tires on blacktop as our early morning savior hit his brakes in a panic stop when he saw a half-dozen bodies in his headlites...

And as a footnote, the apple wine wuz just plain nasty!

W.C. Fields always claimed that it was a woman who drove him to drink ‘n he always regretted that he never thanked her.