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Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Persimmon Memories


I love persimmons. There are few special memories in which persimmons are the stars. Persimmons are the first fruit I remember. They mark a time when I had my first memories of many things. Plus, many of the items I only remember in the context of persimmons.

When I was about thirty-two, I was talking to Mama as I usually did, just rambling on about things that she seemed to enjoy. I was the only child who hung around to talk even as a little child.

As usual, I started out with "I remember when..."

Mama, I remember when we went to pick persimmons when we lived in Fraiser. Do you remember that? I was so hurt when you would made me walk to get persimmons. The year before, you let G (brother) and me ride in the baby buggy. Then, when you had S you made me walk and she and G rode. That really hurt me feelings.

My mother listened in silence, stunned silence. She said, "Linda, I know we have never talked about this before, EVER. I have never told anyone this story. So, you aren't repeating what you heard and thinking you remember the story. I just cannot imagine how you remember this, but you had to have remembered it. You were ONLY two! I don't know how you can remember things when you were only two! I don't remember anything before I was bitten by a snake when I was six and almost died. You were too little to remember." Yet, I did. Then, I told her how the house was laid out, where the furniture and beds were located. She was even more shocked.

We did walk down the gravel road. I am not sure it is called gravel because the small rocks we walked over were the size of golf and tennis balls. Some of the rocks were much larger.

These two early seasons of eating persimmons and our going on foot far away from the house with only Mama  are two of the sweetest memories I have.

When I was a teen, we lived in a place with a barn and a chicken yard. The chickens were housed in one of the little sticking out leanto things on a barn side. The chicken yard had a persimmon tree in the middle. I went to the chicken yard to get persimmons that had not yet fallen from the tree. If I dropped one, I let it lay. Any other time and place, I would have picked up the persimmon, dusted it off, and eaten it.

At the first college I attended, there were persimmon trees planted along the frontage and up the driveway. It was at this school that I met my husband. He wondered if those things on the trees were edible. I assured him they were. He asked the name and then said he had never heard of them or eaten one. He was from New York.  Since this was early November, I had an idea. I sweetly volunteered to go get one for him. He was thinking very highly of himself to have this Southern girl volunteer to make the long walk just to get something for him.

I handed the shriveled persimmon to him. He was furious I would give him something rotten. He scowled and talked sort of mean in front of people. I suddenly had a better idea, "Oh, okay. I will get a better one."

As I walked down the hall and turned toward the front door, I told everyone he had never had a persimmon, didn't like the rotten one, so I was going to get a better, firmer one for him. People stopped talking and stared at me as I showed him the ripe, rotten-looking persimmon. Ours eyes met. I continued as they tried to stifle their smiles and true feelings. I stopped the college president as he was going into his office and told him as I showed him the nice, ripe persimmon. Our eyes met and he had a gleam in his eyes.

When I returned, I cupped a nice round, firm persimmon in my hand so people could see it, telling them he might like this 'nice' one. The tension was palpable in the hall. I brought him the unripe persimmon and he took a big bite as people dissolved in laughter. The hallway erupted with their shock.

He could not speak, but he managed to say, "Oo di da om pupus?"  He gulped water and said the same thing dripping into the water fountain. "You did that on purpose." Of course, it was hard to understand. It was a good joke. Later, I told him not to ever talk to me the way he did when I brought the ripe persimmon.

He finally asked me out and we dated and married. I am quite sure the students and professors who were in the hall and the ones who came out to see him with the astringent persimmon have never forgotten the incident.

The astringent taste is tannin. This is a health hazard. No matter how much water you drink, the astringency remains for way too long.

The secret to ridding your mouth of this feeling/taste? Drink buttermilk. I ran to the house as a teen to find a way to relieve my distress and grabbed buttermilk and poured a glass. One sip ended my problem. Even people who hate buttermilk will probably prefer buttermilk to the astringent persimmon feeling.

For about ten years, I visited a persimmon tree after the first hard frost and ate a few each day. Finally, one summer it was removed. I was so sad about the loss. I just parked at the curb to get my persimmon fix on public property. Right now, I have no idea where there are persimmons that are free.

Persimmons, ripe ones, are good for you.  The tannin can be removed in unripe fruit, making them edible. Try google. Plus, something called bezoars (lumps) form in the stomach when too many unripe fruit is consumed.

The skin is NOT the problem and the black is okay.


First man, you probably have virginiana or texana variety, not Fuju or hachiya...probably spelled wrong. You do not want to wait so long that the fruit drips or smells like it is going to wine.

Your turn
Do you have a cure for the astringency? Have you ever gotten an unripe persimmon?

14 comments:

  1. Yes, I ate one bite of an unripe persimmon; that's all it takes to know the difference between ripe and unripe, eh? Sometimes 'shriveled' is better!

    Enjoyed this post; brought tears over the loss of my mother and my own childhood memories. There is much I can remember long before I was two years old...my soggy diaper is just one. Stumbling over exposed tree roots at the beach in Charleston, another.

    I've often pondered a desire for hypnosis to bring back our memories. We each have a headful of them.

    Hope your day is an easy, fruitful, happy one, Linda.

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  2. sissy,
    I remember things before this, but they are not memories I want to repeat. Thanks.

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  3. You have a very good memory. I can remember the house that I lived in when I was two. Hard t believe what sticks and what doesn't.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sonya Ann,
      I remember Christmas the year I turned two, and balloons...lol. Yes, the things that stick.

      Delete
  4. In my childhood, my grandmother's farm had persimmons but I never ate one. Wonder why...

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  5. I've never had a persimmon, but someone else wrote a post about them yesterday. I saw persimmons for the first time in the photos, or maybe I've seen them before and didn't know what they were.

    Love,
    Janie

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Janie,
      Was that Two Men and a Little Farm blog?

      Delete
  6. I love your memories. Mind don't go back nearly that far.
    I am fond of persimmons too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. EC,
      That memory was one I thought of often in my childhood but never mentioned until I was an adult.

      Delete
  7. I tasted one, once. It must have been not ripe because it turned me off wanting to plant a tree of them. One day I might try another one but wont go looking for it.

    Barb.

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  8. I have eaten them but to my mind their beauty is in how beautiful they are on the tree. To me they look like a tree full of Christmas ornaments. For your readers who have never seen this, I want to explain that the tree is bare of leaves but this barren looking tree is decorated with the most beautiful red-orange fist sized "bulbs". I have basically eaten them in breads.

    Your story about sharing a persimmon with your future husband is very reminiscent of a story my mother told. My parents lived in a home that had several olive trees. When my parents had guests from Oklahoma or Arkansas they would offer their guests "fresh" olives right off their trees. Uncured olives are equally inedible!

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  9. WOW! What an awesome post. Great memories (and funny). Thank you for the shout out and thanks for letting me know that I didn't do anything wrong, other than get some unripe ones, ha. Maybe next year I can figure out how to share some. :-)

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Okay, hoping the annoyances have gone away.