Sarah and I took Robert out in the stroller after lunch today to see if he would go down for a nap. We wandered around our neighborhood, admired some of the late season cherries coming into peak bloom on the campus of a medical school near our place, and browsed the 100¥ shop. Robert succumbed, so we decided to grab a few groceries before heading back home.
It was shaping up to be a routine trip to the market, but that changed when we passed by a display of fruit on our way to check out. The display included a single box of cherries...
As you may or may not know, I used to work at a fruit stand at the Olympia Farmer's Market while attending high school and college. I spent 7 fantastic summers working at Sullivan's Homestead with a crew of exceptional individuals, and we sold cherries. Lots of them. Our boss purchased the cherries in Eastern Washington, one of the finest cherry growing regions in the country, if not the world, and trucked them back to Olympia to sell. During peak season, we would sell upwards of 3000 lbs of cherries per day, and every pound was hand sorted by myself, or one of my illustrious colleagues.
Sorting cherries for hours on end is mind-numbing business, so to pass the time we came up with some vocabulary games in order to keep our minds engaged, but I think it's probably fair to say that we spent most of our time gossiping about the crew members who weren't sorting cherries at that instant, and coming up with imaginative back-stories for the folks on the other side of the counter. The market was perfect for people-watching, and we were a crew of mostly high school and college aged kids, so there was never a shortage of dramatic happenings to be recounted.
Over the years, I became something of a cherry connoisseur. Our boss Sully (is every man who's last name is Sullivan nicknamed Sully?) chased cherries from one end of Washington to the other. Through an extensive array of connections, Sully was able to procure a steady stream of cherries from around the 3rd week of May, right through to the end of July, or even early August. Over the course of the season, varieties would come and go, and I had opportunities to sample them all: Burlot, Chinook, Bing, Van, Lambert, Ranier, pie cherries, Black Republicans, and probably a few more that I'm forgetting. And did I sample? Oh, did I sample! I imagine my bowels looked at the arrival of cherry season in much the same way as a soldier might eye an advancing army, with a combination of dread and resignation.
By the end of the season, you're so tired of sorting cherries (get up, go to work, sort cherries all day, go home, go to sleep, dream about sorting cherries all night, wake up, realize that you have to go to work and sort cherries all day, cry) that you're glad to be done with them, but by the time next spring rolls around, after spending a fall and winter devoid of cherries, I at least, am always impatient for the first cherries of spring.
Why am I telling you all this? So you can believe me when I tell you that as fond as I am of cherries, my passion pales to that of the Japanese. Today I saw a flat of 40 cherries on sale for 98 dollars -- almost 2.50 per cherry. Granted it is barely the middle of April, but these cherries didn't even have stems. Bah.
I took a picture with my phone, but it is being a bit recalcitrant at the moment, and I can not download the image to my laptop. I will amend this post with the image once it is available.
In the meantime, if you made it this far I applaud your attention span. My guess is that you are either family, you worked with me at market, or both. If you do have any favorite market anecdotes, please post a comment and share, I would love to read them.
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3 comments:
You got me, former market employee :) $2.50 a cherry??? I always remember Nellie and Sully talking about how much fruit went for in Japan, but wow, I didn't imagine it was quite so expensive! I think once we had a bunch of gigantic, apricot sized rainier cherries and figured out that they cost about $0.10 per cherry. At the time we thought that was a bit crazy, but it definitely pales in comparison now! Out of curiosity, could you tell what kind of cherry they were? Hopefully Sarah's beloved apricots won't be quite so expensive!!! -Cammy
I miss cherries...and Market...and Nellie and Sully...and everything from home...
Anyway, I think that was a pretty accurate description of the life of a cherry-sorter. My sentiments exactly. It's really interesting seeing how excited the Irish and American assistants who are not from the Northwest get over bings. I really don't get it. Poor things have never even heard of a van. I've given up on trying to explain the superiority of of vans. I guess ignorance is bliss!!
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