I sit in the World’s Best Spot: the center of my backyard on the West Side of Madison.
It’s a perfect August day in South Central Wisconsin—the sky clear, a few puffy clouds, no storm in view or portended. The air carries a sweetness from somewhere and a cool touch to banish undue heat or humidity.
My eyes are glazed over with ancient motions, amendments, and speeches from the chronicle of Congregational combat open for perusal in my lap for the sake of a churchy book I hope to write. I set the tome aside, glance at my empty wine glass. A small zephyr stirs my sleeve and brushes my cheek.
The cool, sweet eveningness of the air lofts me back to a wild ice-creamy night, a time almost before memory serves: The Knox County Fair, halfway between Knoxville and East Galesburg, Illinois. It must be 1949; if it were ’50 or ’51, the scene would be clearer, more complete.
I know we walked in golden sun from Grandma’s house in Knoxville, along the dusty road to the Fairgrounds, a bevy of aunts and I—Aunt Jo and Aunt Jean and Aunt Sue and Aunt Linda, and one open-eyed four-year-old boy, fog-bound in girls’ chatter yet off on a great adventure.
I don’t recall what happened after that: A snort of horses and cows, a sniff of slit-eyed pigs, a whiff of be-ribboned fruit pies held aloft by grinning old ladies, and the day slid into darkness.
I do remember standing in a night-struck field, between the flashing lights of the midway and the ramp where trotting horses made for the track, pulling sulkies with drivers in parti-colored silks. The grass under our feet was stiff hay-stubble, but what got my attention was the altogether novel taste of a wonderful ice cream they were giving forth in cones from a little booth. It was creamy like vanilla only with some other, exotic flavor I had not words to describe.
But my taste buds remembered it forty or fifty years later, when I finally manned up and brought myself to taste pistachio. That was it. Pistachio.
Who knew?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve come to like pistachio. But it never tastes quite the way it did in 1949 at the Fairgrounds.
Dear Reader—whatever may be the pistachio in your life, go for it. Before it’s all gone.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers
Your New Favorite Writer
