apples and history

I stood at the kitchen counter this morning dumping pills from brown and white bottles in my morning ritual. I swallowed all five at once, then put a steroid drop in each eye. I fed a Walmart-brand coffee pod into the machine. There was an apple on the counter and the smell brought forth a long-dormant memory. 

My great grandparents lived in a tiny four room house on the west side of town. The house always smelled of coal oil and apples. Grandpa never said much. He sat on the porch swing, a grey railroad engineer’s cap perched on his bald head. Every now and then he would lean forward and spit a stream of tobacco juice into the bushes in front of the porch. The back of the shrubbery was dead, the front green. The side yard was littered with lumps of discarded chew. The smell of that apple reminded me vividly of that house. 

Thoughts of my great grandparents makes me appreciate the ties of history. My great grandfather’s father was a civil war veteran. Ponder that.  Man I wish child me had asked some questions. Mostly, child me was bored silly sitting around at the old people’s house. Great Grandpa did let me swing on the porch with him though.