BATTLE in JULY

This ought to really get the comments - GRIN
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Early one July Saturday, before the sun was high enough to burn off the dew, I set off with a bucket and can to pick berries. The day portended to be hot, but a beautiful one with a blue sky and puffy cumulus clouds scattered about. This was not to be a leisurely stroll through a U-PICK, gently placing the “easy-to-find” blueberries or strawberries in the pail.
Armed with only a container and long blue-jeans, this was hard-core berry-picking at its finest! This was fruit war! This was a battle against berries that held the high defensive position and had the courage to fight back with tenacity. This was a battle to take unwilling captives; this was a mission to capture prisoners of war. The thorny question before me was I up to the challenge or would I surrender and quit in the face of an intractable foe?
I drove to the logged-over acreage at the end of the dirt road, left the bucket in the bed of the truck and took the old 3-lb coffee can and waded into the thick of it. What a year for berries! Its seems that each berry location alternates a poor year with an excellent year and this year the berries were bountiful. But quantity of berries didn’t make them any easier to pick, just a bit faster. The bushes were just as tangled and thorny.
There are always the thorns near the fruit themselves that grab the back of my hand, but there are also the year-old canes, that have grown to produce berries next year, to contend with. They make an active and persistent effort to tangle around my knees, reach out and snag my arms and bend over my back to sink their curved scimitar thorns through my shirt and into my skin. Sometimes they even get embedded into my hat and make a Herculean effort to snatch it from off my head.
But the berries are plump and juicy and worth the effort and pain. The first few dozen berries make a hollow plinking noise as they hit the bottom of the can, but later on as the can fills up all they can hardly be heard. Picking in the early morning is much safer then in the heat of the afternoon. There are no Japanese beetles to try and wiggle from under my fingers when I try to pick the berry they’re eating and, more importantly, there are no June bugs hiding in ambush! June bugs are basically harmless insects that hid in the berry canes until I reach my hand past them towards some especially delicious looking berries behind those branches. As soon as my hand and forearm are well past the thorny canes the June bug will take off with a loud raucous noise. Now June bugs don’t bite or sting, in fact sometimes kids will tie light fishing string to a hind leg and let them fly in circles over their heads. But when that sudden whirling noise catches me concentrating on the lush berries almost in my fingers . . . I jerk my hand back and the sharp thorns leave more curving scratches on my skin. You would think I’d get used to it, but I never do.
Picking berries requires nimble fingers. I always pick with my left hand and hold the can with the right. This is very evident the next day at church. As I stand at the door, as a greeter and shake hands, my right hand and arm look almost unwounded, but it’s the left that has come home from the battle with the worst injuries – covered with little red welts! I pick the berries using my thumb and the first two fingers and then move them back into my palm. After picking five or so berries its time to put them in the can, if I try and pick just-one-more I find that inevitability as I move it to my palm another one falls out the bottom and I’m reminded not to be greedy or in too much of a hurry.
After twenty-minutes or so, the old coffee can is almost filled to the top. Now is not the time to lose my grip and drop the can! I make my way back to the truck and dump them in the 3-gallon pail. They look so wonderful and delicious, but I’m not really seeing the berries; I’m seeing berry pies covered with toasty lattice crust; I’m staring at jars labeled “Black Raspberry Jam” and a bowl of homemade granola with berries turning the milk into a sweet purple broth.
Four or five cans later the bucket in the truck is almost full and its starting to get hot. The perspiration is rolling down my neck and dripping onto my glasses, the berries are getting harder and harder to find, and the salt in my sweat is making the multitude of thorn perforations begin to sting and itch. Time to quit and take home my hard won fruit. In two day or so my hands and arms will have healed, in a week the poison-ivy that somehow got on my leg just above my sock will stop itching and I will forget about the hard fought “Battle in July”. That is until, I reach into the freezer for the berries because my wife wants to bake a pie or until I open the closet and pull out another jar of jam, then all the memories will come flooding back regardless of the cold damp winter weather outside.