Friday's drive to the farm

On the walk from the car to the front door of Jim’s Apple Farm, you start to think it must have been a good year for pumpkins. The lot is lined with them, hundreds of them in all shapes and sizes – your choice, only $2.98. When you reach the door and push it open, you forget the pumpkins, forget the cars buzzing past on Highway 169, and forget the week on which you just closed the door.

It’s the polka music that gets you. It’s the 2/4 beat oohm-pa-pa of tuba paired with accordion that calls up the bohemian in you and makes you forget the life you forged for yourself long before you were ever qualified to make such decisions. Suddenly you’re a child skipping between apple barrels and tables piled with strudel and pie. You see the jars of pickled eggs, pickled beets and pickled pickles, but the table of homemade fudge is far more appealing and even that doesn’t hold your attention for long because behind it are bags of colored popcorn stretched out like a rainbow and beyond that, more tables spread with more than 200 varieties of candy.

The 2/4 beat ends, replaced by a 3/4 beat. You’re heart stops racing and you examine the candy that sweetened your childhood – wax lips, candy cigarettes, licorice pipes, snaps, rock candy, Swedish fish, Blackjack, root beer barrels and jawbreakers. Slowly, nostalgia wanes and you recapture a remnant of the self that stepped out of the car earlier. You came in for apples, you remind yourself. So you step over to the tasting table to see if there’s an apple that tastes better than the tart Haralson, the variety that pulled you toward the parking lot in the first place. There is. It’s called Honeycrisp.

But your senses get bombarded again, this time from the ovens in the back where dozens of pies bubble. You recall that you hadn’t eaten dinner and the individually wrapped bars of strudel are more temptation than one hungry human can bear. You grab one, and then grab a bag of Haralsons because the Honeycrisps are too expensive. Then you head for the register, trying not to notice the caramel apples sitting on the counter.

You pay the young man who has spent his entire day among the sweets in order to pay for his education. He’s ready to leave too. You exchange smiles, grateful for the chance to escape this den of temptation, this barn-full of fruit-filled pastry and candy concoction. You’re back among the pumpkins. And then you’re back in your car. The strudel is gone.

Before you turn back onto the highway, you make one quick scan of your radio looking for polka. Nothing. You frown.