An Excellent All-American Adventure: Day 4, #2

And here's the story of my afternoon in a small village that has waited for me to come back. I'll take the notes directly from my small journal for Friday:

It turns out I was quite right about Dexter; it hasn't changed much in 55 years, and that was very consoling for me, this Friday afternoon. After I journalled about my old homestead for a while and finished my soup/half-sandwich lunch, I asked for directions to the mill, and it was just around the corner and up a couple of country blocks, across the NY Central rail tracks. As I drove up to it I thought, "YEESSS! It is the place we always came for apples, cider, and .... mmmm .... donuts, when I was a kid."

I parked in the lot and walked around snapping pictures, trying to catch on film all my good old memories. Looking down at the entrance to the little sales room, I recaptured them in my mind immediately; and it was just the sort of day that would have drawn us to come out for a drive in the 1950s: clear, slightly warm but with a cool breeze, and great puffy clouds scudding across deep blue skies.

I walked on down to the entrance, the heady scent of just-picked apples and warm cinnamon donuts drawing me hungrily nearer. The shelves inside the barn were laden with jams, honeys, and every manner of apple-y thing you can stuff into a jar. I joined the line of people slowly snaking around to the service counter, and when it was my turn I ordered a glass of ice-cold cider and a cinnamon donut. Just one of each, mind you: I am not such as pig as some people might think.

Sitting in the dappled sunlight on a bench near the rushing Huron River, absorbing this feast (it's what God orders up, when She comes to this part of Michigan) I was in Proust Heaven; no madeleine, no cafe au lait, ever conjured up better memories, I am sure of that. I channelled an autumn snapshot of my mother and dad sitting in the front seat of our Chevy with the racy aqua-and-white exterior, my brother in the back seat by one open window , myself on the other side, and little Melissa stuck in the middle (as was only right, she being the youngest) -- driving through the old back roads on a Saturday afternoon, singing silly songs ("Splot goes the spider against the wall" was our favorite; we made the words up to drive my mother crazy, to the tune of the equally silly Christmas ditty, "Up On The Housetop"). Don't ask. When we got to the cider mill, we'd pile out in a hurry and run down the slope toward that very same glorious scent of autumn harvest banquet that had drawn me back today.

As I reluctantly drove away, I got a bit lost on back byways (I think my eyes were a bit misty, perhaps) and I turned down a side road to make a U-turn and go back the way I'd come: and was immediately confronted by the startling image you see on the left. "Don't shoot, I'm only turning around" I muttered, backing and filling rapidly. You never know what you'll find in these backwoods, brothers and sisters! (I did take a very quick snapshot before speeding off and away; had to prove I'd actually seen it!)

In many months and years ahead, I'll be distilling all that I've experienced here this time, and trying to tie it to old pictures in my memory bank. (As Diane said, while we were reminiscing a couple of days ago: "Don't rush me, my memory bank is trying to access that data.")

One of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Goudge said it: "You cannot judge the value of what happens to you until many years afterwards. Then you see how one thing led to another, and how it was all – even the little trivial things, as well as the big ones – somehow necessary."