Depending on the time of year – Spring through Summer — our neighborhood offered various culinary adventures. In addition to the Japanese Plum trees, there was a large mulberry tree in Joe Villeneuve’s front yard that yielded inch-long mulberries in the spring. Disregarding the somewhat furry bristles that stuck out from between purple-black pods of juicy pulp, we would chew them carefully trying to extract the juice and spit out as many seeds as possible. It was not long before we had purple streams of Fu Manchu-like “mustaches” of purple stain dribbling from the corners of our mouths.

At the other end of the street, in front of the Taylor home, we could feast on juicy, ripe plums so thick on the branches they sagged to the point of breaking. We made sure that they did not.

Two houses down from “Ma” Taylor’s home lived an almost elderly couple. He worked for the railroad in some capacity that would often see his shift end in the middle of the night. From my bedroom window I could see him stop the car in the driveway, lights on, get out of the car and unlock the garage doors, swing them open, put the car in the garage, lock the garage and go in the house. I don’t remember that he ever left his old car out in the weather for even one night.

The object of our attention in late summer was the huge Persimmon tree that grew not far from the garage. It must have been well over 60 feet tall. With careful climbing to get out onto the big limbs, one could harvest quite a few persimmons.

It was during one of those first visits to that Persimmon tree that I learned what happens when you try to eat a not quite ripe persimmon. I thought my mouth was going to turn inside out. On the other hand, when the persimmons were almost squishy ripe, they were deliciously exotic desserts. My grandmother, Eva, about once a year would use some of those persimmons to make persimmon bread, a dense, but quite tasty loaf.

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