Summer Days

During the summer, when my brother John and I were still in grade school, we spent some time out on our grandparents’ farm. We often went out to the backwoods to pick and eat wild strawberries and wild blackberries. The wild berries always tasted better than the cultivated ones. Close to the house was an orchard containing around 50 fruit trees of different kinds. I remember that there were several varieties of apples, pears and cherries. We were especially fond of the cherries. One day we had been up in a cherry tree eating delicious dark red cherries. After a while, I climbed down. John was still up near the top, exuberantly eating the best cherries. John shouted down at me, “Gee whiz, these are good cherries.” I verbally agreed.

The cheerful chatter was broken by a sudden moment of silence. Next came the sound of tree limbs snapping and breaking as John leaped straight from the top of the tree to the ground and immediately started to run as if he had gone nuts. I ran too. When he finally calmed down, I discovered that my six-foot tall, 160-pound powerful younger brother had been challenged for cherries in the tree top by several tiny yellow jacket bees. In the presence of bees his courage – and mine – had wilted.