Imagine our new juvenile justice center surrounded by vineyard. In winter these little gnarly crosses in matrix gracing the portage escarpment where the eastern plateau rolls downhill sometimes gently, sometimes precipitously toward the river valley.
Imagine the summer while the hillside would be green with grape leaves...
Then the harvest...
When I was twelve or thereabouts, my parents decided to take me on a road trip to Ohio. It was meant to show me the "motherland" - my father's motherland. I had often been to my mother's homeland in Georgia - Spalding County, just south of Atlanta where the dirt is red and the pines tall and glistening. I had experienced tomatoes and corn warm from the garden and even picked cotton and fuzzy peaches. I'd been up early wakened by the smell of my uncle's smokehouse and picked blackberries despite warnings of rattlesnakes.
But this was different. We traveled over the mountains and visited my older half-sister and her family in Louisville and then headed east to Lexington, KY. I have photos of my parents and me at the motel swimming pool. The next day we went to Athens where my parents had lived just after the war. My Dad taught at Ohio University and my older brother was born there. We stayed with friends of the family, a Presbyterian minister and his wife. Their house was on Peach Ridge and their backyard tumbled downhill in an array of fruit and gardens burgeoning with vegetables and flowers. Our hostess made apple pie and served it with sharp cheddar cheese; at 12 years old I was wary, but smitten on tasting it. The taste of warm apple pie with a sliver of sharp cheddar will always be accompanied by the olfactory memory of concord grapes. Just outside the back door of the house was a pergola laden with concord grapes. Their hypnotic smell wafted into the kitchen and dining room. That smell had been there all day as the sun warmed the grapes, but by dessert time I could not ignore it. It imprinted itself on my memory like a brand on a calf. Apparently it made a definite and long lasting impression.
This evening I bought concord grapes at J&L Market on Euclid by the train/rapid tracks. It is a fall tradition. Just like buying Christmas trees there. 30 years in Ohio. Almost 30 years of trees and almost 30 years of grapes at J&L.
But unlike other years, tonight I thought of grapes growing on the hillside of the escarpment, a fragrant bounty perfuming the forgotten triangle is on this crisp fall evening... INTOXICATING!