- Summer Fruits
-
- Many summers ago
- when Grandpa would come home
- from the fields
- his white plastic buckets would bring
- either bad or good news for the
- tastes of us grandchildren,
- asparagus or the sweet taste of
- a Thompson seedless.
-
- When Grandpa unloaded his brother
- Domingo's truck, we all watched
- with anticipation. Would the tools he
- removed be the hand-held clippers
- or the long-shafted asparagus cutters.
- Would we get the sweet summer afternoon
- treat of grapes popping in our mouths.
- Or would mom get yet another
- brown paper bag of "it's good for you"
- despite the taste.
-
- But it was the asparagus that bought
- the tiny green house in a westside Fresno neighborhood
- it was the grapes, and later raisins that
- raised eight children
- while strawberries, peaches and onions
- clothed, fed and sent them to school.
-
- While we, wild grandchildren with dirty
- bare feet, ate grapes and watched
- afternoon cartoons before the front yards
- were chain linked in we had no idea
- we were the first generation of Ricardos
- who would not pick the very fruit we ate.
-
- Grandpa's pruning clippers, asparagus
- cutters and knives are dispersed among the
- garages and tool sheds of the rest of the family,
- but the dirt from the fields has not washed away
- in the stories about working with Pop.
- And now I miss the taste of
- fresh asparagus.
-
©2000 Rod Ricardo-Livingstone
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