“What Did I Tell You About Climbing Those Damn Apple Trees?”

My grandma was Valerie Smith (1926-1968). We used to live on an apple orchard. She would make us go out, get apples, and peel them. Then we would put the apples in the sun to make dried apples. She would put some of the dried apples in bags and used them to make apple pie in the winter. She would always warn us that we couldn’t go pick the apples without being supervised. One day, I saw this nice, big red apple I wanted to get way in the top of a tree. So, when everybody finished and went into the house, I snuck back out and went back down to the apple orchard. I climbed the tree and I fell from the top all the way down to the bottom on the ground. I still have the scar on my arm from where I fell. When I went back in the house, my grandma just looked at me and said, “What did I tell you about climbing those damn apple trees unsupervised?” I learned my lesson that day.  I never climbed an apple tree without supervision again.

Jean Anne Photoshop