We all take for granted those things that are easily obtained. This is an obvious statement and there are so many examples in our society of this kind of presumption. For me it was apples and lemons.
The house I grew up in had an apple tree in the yard that dropped apples on the lawn in the fall. They were not good to eat but apples were all around me. There was a cider mill just up the street and during the season it was a weekly tradition to go for a gallon of cider with my grandparents every Sunday. In my teens, I worked at that mill making candy apples, directing traffic dressed as a scarecrow and cashiering in the gift shop. At home we made apple pies and applesauce and apple muffins; an apple a day.
In the backyard of the house where I lived in California during my internship, much later in life, there was a lemon tree. I could walk out into the yard and pick a lemon, bring it back into the house, squeeze it into a glass, add a little sugar and have lemonade. I found this wondrous in a way that I never had with apples. Would my citrus rich neighbors have been equally enamored with watching ground up apples being slowly pressed as they released their dark brown and naturally sweet liquid? Did any of them remember that when life gives you lemons, you are supposed to make lemonade?
As life goes on and I live in a place with neither a cider mill at the end of the block or a lemon tree in the yard, I appreciate both. It is actually hard to find a good cider mill now. Especially one that doesn’t pasteurize the cider and pasteurized cider is really just apple juice to me. It is a commodity worth paying a little bit more. It is equally hard for me to pass up fresh squeezed lemonade on a hot summer day and even though lemons are easy to come by at any grocery store, it is never quite the same. It is all a little like comparing apples and oranges.
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