The first sign of trouble at the apple orchard wasn't the state troopers directing traffic, the guy in the neon vest sending us to park in a far-off field or the enormous battalion of portable toilets. It was the woman in the crowd by the entrance, leaning on a rustic fence post, barfing up a whole lot of apples. If Hieronymus Bosch went apple picking, this would be his spot.
I don't remember when apple picking turned into such an unleashed expression of autumnal id. Are we overindulging our manic search for connection in an orchard of earthly delights? Could we be making up for all our screen time by commanding group bonding between the Idareds and the Golden Delicious? Breathe deep, we say. Isn't the air crisp?
Apple picking has become for families what "leaf peeping" is for new couples on their first weekend away: A high-stakes quest for joy that simultaneously raises a host of not-as-advertised realities. Yes, it is a maker of family memories and a key revenue source for small farms. And yes, the line is too long for the cider doughnuts, you do need to pay extra for the corn maze and your apples are growing heavier by the minute, if not in your bag, then at least in your mind.
Dispatches from the orchard front include complaints of apple theft that have required searches at the exits. Last year, Lynd Fruit Farm in Pataskala, Ohio, warned visitors it would call the sheriff's office on offenders who hid their pickings at checkout, reporting apple thefts of $80, $160 and $400 at a time. On social media, the orchard described a car riddled with stolen apples tucked under seats and blankets, in the glove compartment and "under/behind the man's wife." Alex Patton, a co-owner of the farm, said he's seen wives sitting on $20 worth of produce. "From their shoulders to their butt, it's just apples," he said.
In the arms race for seasonal add-ons, nobody's blinking. One New York orchard offers pig races (not real pigs), a rock wall and a burger barn. Another advertises line dancing and teacup rides. Different price levels for the family extravaganza deliver the orchard equivalent of VIP bottle service. Wristbands designate how much parents love their children: enough for the all-access pass or just enough for access to the scruffy llama at the pop-up petting zoo?
I remember going to apple orchards in upstate New York as a kid. One was so indifferent to tourists, no one bothered to rip the vines of poison ivy off the tree trunks. You could hurl an apple in any direction and not hit a soul. We spread out a picnic blanket, ate fried chicken, popped cherry tomatoes like candy and watched the clouds float over the treetops.
One fall I climbed a tree and dropped an apple down to my Dad when he wasn't expecting it. The apple hit him square in the eye. I was so taken with my own wordplay -- "Dad, I'm the apple of your eye!" -- that I barely registered his howls of agony. For years after that, he'd notice a floater drifting across his field of vision. But I am an apple-picking person, and my Dad was an apple-picking person, and I think he understood even then that some things are worth risking an eye for.
Going apple picking today, at least in the pale of New York, can feel a little like lunging for a seat on a crowded subway. Two families eyeing the same tree. Who will get there first? How quickly can we walk without looking like we are sprinting? Get your own tree, my eyes have said more than once. This one's mine.
This is, of course, unsportsmanlike conduct on the apple field. Time to take the haywagon back to the car, or rather, to the bus stop to wait for the shuttle to the auxiliary parking lot. Skip the hay bale photo op and the overextended visit to the pumpkin patch. Forgo pondering the eternal question of why the pumpkin in the shape we want has a weird wart and why the pumpkin without the weird wart isn't in the shape we want. Go back to the city. Order some McIntoshes on FreshDirect. Call it a day.
Maybe my bitter apples are over the fact that my son Joe is fast aging out of the pick-your-own demographic. I never really managed to convince him or my husband of the activity's magic, though the other day Joe brought up the barfing apple lady unbidden. I think it's his only apple picking memory. I'll take it. We were together, it was fall -- and that air? So crisp.