GWPR-14 A PEACH AND A SMILE

 A Peach and a Smile

Driving to work today I passed the

local plant nursery where my wife

likes to buy flowers, shrubs, fruit

trees, etc. That jogged my

memory that now is the time for

spraying peach trees to prevent

worms in the fruit months from

now. I would need to get the

proper insecticide for my wife’s

little orchard.

Then the thought came of a time,

decades ago, when my grandma

would take her little grandsons out

to the large, peach tree behind her

Mississippi farmhouse.

(Sometimes it was to get a switch!)

But, sometimes it was to lovingly

peel a juicy, sweet peach and hand

it to us, with a strange, distant look

in her eyes, as she enjoyed the

tree’s fruit with us. (why do I

remember that?!)

Many decades before those days, a

Swede immigrant in Pennsylvania

saw a newspaper ad that a fortune

could be made with a peach

orchard in Citronelle, Alabama.

Besides, it was warmer there in the

winter, most likely! So, off they

moved to Alabama, Papa John and

his immigrant family. Just across

the state line, in Mississippi, was a

young highland lass, Sarah Isabelle

McLeod, whom heaven had

evidently arranged for young

George Cornelson to meet.

Romance bloomed and my

grandson is the 6th generation

from Papa John’s. But, the peach

orchard had a killing freeze one

year. The trees died, but love

survived. Papa George married

Mama Sally and moved to the

farm which I loved as a child.

But, I have to wonder, was that

one, lone peach tree behind the

Cornelson farmhouse a survivor

from that freeze? Was that distant

look in Mama Sally’s eye thinking

back to a time when a youthful

George gave her a peach tree as a

token of his heart? Will I ever

again eat peach jam, my favorite,

on toast, without wondering this?!

(I’d love a cutting from that tree,

but it is long gone, sadly.)

Or, was grandma just thinking that

her mean little grandsons deserved

the worm she had seen in the

peach she handed us? My twisted

mind runs in warped meanderings.

But, my wife, Melanie, (originally

from the Peach State?!) just called

and reminded me to help her get

the trees sprayed this week. God

moves in mysterious ways, indeed.

Love does take on many forms.

(Sometimes, I have wondered if

the peach is descended from the

tree guarded in the Garden?!)

Jerry Cornelson 03.10.09