When you’re 11 and in love with strength, power and baseball, apples can take on a near-mystical function.
“Have you ever thrown an apple off a stick?” Uncle Sullins asked.
I shook my head, and that brought Uncle Sullins off the porch and into his backyard.
My brother, 18 to my 11, curious about this little adventure, joined us.
Uncle Sullins found a broken branch, pulled out his pocket knife and quickly whittled a sharp point at the end of the stick.
He stuck a medium-size apple on the stick, brought his right arm back and quickly snapped it forward. The apple flew into space.
It landed about 20 yards down the hill, in the middle of the hayfield.
I nodded in approval.
Uncle Sullins, a bit giddy with his success, picked up a bigger apple, and, perhaps feeling a surge of adrenaline, flung the apple as no apple had been flung before that afternoon, or since, I imagine.
It soared majestically through clear mountain air of Abingdon, Virginia. As it did, Uncle Sullins and my brother realized something.
That apple was going places, specifically the front porch of a house across the road. It landed with a thud.
The sound was in contrast to how softly that sharpened stick hit the ground after Uncle Sullins dropped it. And before that stick even landed, Uncle Sullins and my brother had left the scene of the crime.
I stood in place. It never occurred to me that having a good-sized apple land unexpectedly on your porch might bring a curious resident out the front door. Then, a man appeared, saw the apple, saw me and thought I looked pretty good for what just had happened.
“Quit throwing those apples,” he yelled.
Me? No. Tell him Uncle . . . hey, where’d everybody go?
Sullins Caldwell actually was my mother’s uncle, by virtue of his marriage to Lydia Goodpasture, my mother’s aunt.
My mother loved Aunt Lyd and Abingdon, a charming little town in the mountains of southwest Virginia, where she’d grown up. Each summer, we’d spend a week at Aunt Lyd and Uncle Sullins’ house.
Even though we lived in the Roanoke Valley, there was something about the mountain air of Abingdon. It was cooler in the mornings, more comfortable in the afternoons and offered perfect sleeping weather, even on August nights.
Aunt Lyd and Uncle Sullins lived at the top of Rodefer Street, in a rambling, two story frame structure, cooled by nothing more than open windows with sturdy screens.
Several apple trees were on their land, and apples always were on the ground, waiting for me and my solid plastic bat.
Those apples and that bat enabled me to occupy countless happy hours in Abingdon.
I played entire games, imitating the players of my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I’d go through the Pirates’ batting order, grabbing an apple in one hand, tossing it into the air, then gripping the bat before the apple dropped into the strike zone. I’d swing from the left or right-hand side of the plate, depending on which Pirate I was imitating.
In my imagination, the Pirates would fall hopelessly behind, then rally in the late innings. The comebacks always were led by the incomparable Roberto Clemente, playing right field and batting third, and the powerful Willie Stargell, playing leftfield and hitting cleanup. They would send towering blasts, er, apples, to the deepest corners of Forbes Field, uh, the hayfield, driving in run after run.
Somehow, the Pirates always won in the bottom of the ninth.
The comebacks were never-ending. Same with the apples.
Eventually, summer vacations meant summer jobs. Trips to Abingdon became infrequent.
Several years ago, I stopped by Rodefer Street on the way home from an assignment in Bristol.
The house was gone, replaced by a small apartment building.
The hayfield that once seemed so vast now was surprisingly small.
A young woman was sitting on the side porch of one of the apartments. I asked if she had known the Caldwells.
No, she said.
Oh, come on, I wanted to say. Aunt Lyd and Uncle Sullins knew everyone, and everyone knew them. More importantly, to my mother at least, Aunt Lyd knew everything about everyone in Abingdon.
And, I should have said, “There were apple trees on this property, and apples would fall off the limbs and cover the ground like a carpet and . . . hey, let me tell you about the time Uncle Sullins sharpened a stick and stuck an apple on the end of it. See that house just across the road? You are not going to believe this . . .”
The story above first appeared in our September / October 2023 issue.
