I mentioned my student Eddie in my previous post about poison ivy. (Eddie bragged, then ate poison ivy and ended up in the hospital.) I have another great Eddie story. I was the inaugural horticulture instructor at Pioneer Joint Vocational High School in Shelby, Ohio, immediately after I finished my Master’s in horticulture at Ohio State in 1968. (I grew up in College Station, but transferred from a department with a handful of students at TAMU to one with 240 at OSU.) That job teaching school was my favorite job of my entire career. I had students from 18 different ISDs who came to our area-wide school each day. Some were under-achievers or potential dropouts. Others were special needs students. Our job was to ensure they could go on to college if they wished, or that they would have a salable trade if they opted to go that route. It was SO grand seeing the lights come on! And then we had Eddie. Great kid. A bit on the short side of short, but always trying to keep up with the big guys. We made a trip to an apple orchard at harvest time in October. It was 38 degrees outside. Eddie wore a trench coat that was dragging the ground as we walked through the trees. The orchard owner explained that he picked the perfect apples and took them to his retail market. Those that were less than perfect went to the large cider press and were converted into fresh apple cider. (I had never had fresh apple cider until I moved to Ohio! Oh my!) But back out in the orchard – there was a third quality of apples. They weren’t good enough even for the cider press, so they were dropped to the ground to be picked up later. Well, “later” came that day when Eddie showed up. I didn’t realize it, but Eddie was busy filling his pockets. Huge, deep trench coat pockets. Pockets like you’d want if you were trying to gather 20 or 30 apples. Now folks, these were really not very nice apples. But by the time we got into the store, Eddie looked like he’d developed a case of pocket-mumps. About that time, the orchard owner (nice guy!) said to my 25 students, “We’ve had a really good year. Take all my best apples you can get in your coat pockets home to your family.” The class turned to Eddie and broke out in laughter. That’s when I realized what had been happening. Eddie’s pockets were sold out, no room to spare. Full of bad apples – and worms. But the day got worse for Eddie. We went into the big room where they pressed the misshapen and oddly colored apples into that great fresh cider. It’s fascinating to watch, and when the demo was over, the really nice orchard owner handed each youngster a paper cup and gave an invitation to taste it “fresh from the tree” (at 38 degrees). It seems that Eddie was behind the door when the common sense was passed out, because he drank 10 or 12 cups of the FRESH apple cider. We didn’t see Eddie for a few days. No one complained, though. It was probably just as well. He wasn’t in much condition to be seen. And those were the lessons Eddie learned that day in the apple orchard.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 15:54:59 +0000
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