Tangelos
Topic: People/Family stories
Smell is such a strong sense that one little whiff of some smell from our past can bring memories flooding back to us. My personality is extra-sensitive to the senses and I get very vivid flashbacks or mental images when I smell certain things. They are usually good things like the smell of certain colognes remind me of different people from my past, the smell of the pine woods reminds me of camping and a closeness of God's presence, the smell of a baby's sweet head reminds me of being a new mom and the sweetness of that new child.

A few days ago, I saw a neglected bowl of oranges sitting on the counter and weeded through them, having to throw out 2 because they looked iffy. Then I decided to eat one because they looked yummy......the good ones, not the squishy, shriveled ones. As I broke into that orange with my fingernail and the spray of juice from that fruit hit my hose, a flood of memories of my dad came into my head and heart and I stood there for a long time, hovering over my kitchen sink, peeling and eating the orange.

My dad was an engineer by personality. Everything had order and purpose and he loved that part of life. He lived in the house I grew up in, in Phoenix, for 30+ years and had many 'systems' that were not to be tampered with! The 2 car garage rarely housed a car. It was his shop, where he had every tool known to man. I know that because every man in the neighborhood stopped by to borrow things from my dad's garage. If one of them stopped by while he wasn't home, I'd say, "Well I don't know where it is." Which was usually responded to by, "Oh, I know right where he keeps it if you can just let me into the garage." I don't think Dad ever turned anyone away who wanted to borrow something. In fact, they often stayed to visit with him about their project and I"m sure they all got lots of advice from my dad, who could fix anything from a tiny watch to a washing machine. My dad was friend to all and everyone loved him.

While they lived in that house, he tried several garden projects. Once, he pulled out the huge bushes that shaded our backyard and put in a vegetable garden with asparagus, green beans, sometimes okra, tomatoes, and other assortments. Eventually his free child labor rebelled and he filled in the garden plot with grass and planted fruit trees. These were chopped down a few years later because the birds got most of the fruit and they got diseased. One of the first things he planted though, the things that lasted and he was never disappointed in were his tangelo trees.

Over the years, they grew higher than our house, which was 2 stories and produced hundreds, maybe a thousand or more tangelos....each! They were his pride and joy. He tended them, he pruned them, watered them faithfully, he even ordered preying mantises through the mail to let loose into the trees to eat the bad bugs. And they did, and they were fun to catch too. (he let us catch them as long as we put them back into the trees when we were done playing....which we actually did gently or we got in big trouble!)

THEN came January, February and March, in which time you were to make as many plans for Saturdays as you could so you wouldn't have to pick tangelos or worse yet....juice them! He finally got an electric juicer, but that was only in the last few years they lived there. Most of those years, those dreadful tangelos were juice by hand, the juice was poured into ice cube trays, transported to the downstairs freezer, then when frozen, popped into ziplok bags, labeled with date, number of cubes and set lovingly onto the freezer shelves.

After they were all juiced, the juice frozen into cubes, the cubes numbered and dated, he did his calculations. He actually numbered out how many cubes he had in the freezer until the next tangelo harvest! So he knew how many cubes he could eat every day. If ever a man was addicted to tangelos, he's your guy! I don't remember my dad having a selfish bone in his body. He was generous with his family and neighbors of his time and his possessions. But man, you didn't mess with his cubes!!!!

He knew if someone had been into them and we heard about it! Yes, he juiced them all, so they were HIS....kind of Little Red Hennish of him, don't you think? Well, none of us really cared much for tangelos anyway, so it was just as well. They smell much better than they taste. My husband though, was groomed by my dad to like tangelos and sometimes he looks for them in the store or threatens mentions buying a tangelo tree. Maybe it's because he didn't grow up having to pick them or juice them or clean up the kitchen after a juicing day!

So for a couple of months each year, our house smelled of tangelo juice. When the fruit was ripe, every morning, he would go out to his trees, pick a tangelo and bring it back into the house and peel and eat it methodically and thoroughly!

Since it was also the time of day when the coffee was made, the smell of fresh coffee and fresh citrus fruit wafting together in the air became a sensory memory that was deeply instilled in my mind. And it is a very pleasant one. Each morning in winter, I would come down to the kitchen to be greeted with that smell and with my cheerful dad eating his oranges and reading his Bible or some devotional book. I can still see him sitting there, munching his tangelo and looking up to say, "Gooooood morning, cricket!"

Such a sweet memory. His birthday is on Monday. He was born the same day (different year) as Martin Luther King Jr. We'll be thinking of him this year, but he won't be joining us, as he went Home to be with the Lord last August.

And I'll bet he's in charge of the tangelo trees there. I wouldn't be surprised to get to Heaven and be greeted by him with a long fruit pickin stick in his hand and the smell of a tangelo on his fingers, "Well helloooo, cricket! What took you so long? Let me show you my trees."