Mulberry Summer

We welcome a new writer to the Phil on Hol gang. Landis Green is the new head of school at the John Bapst School in Bangor, Maine. We first heard his mulberry story on a cool night in beautiful downtown South Brooksville, Maine.

Early summer in northeastern Pennsylvania meant one thing to me as a child: mulberries. People wax poetic about strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, etc., but anyone who's taken the time to introduce herself to the pleasures of a ripened mulberry knows that the rest pale by comparison.

Some of my fondest memories of childhood happened in the gloaming of early summer evenings. I'd run, barefooted of course, across the street into the ruins of a long-burned church where mulberry trees had taken root decades before. There, standing in the purplish mess of overripe berries fallen on the moist ground, I'd stretch and reach to gently pluck the about-to-fall (and therefore sweetest) berries from the lower branches of huge, old trees. "Gently" is the operative word, of course, because if you had to pull, they weren't really ripe. My vessel -- at least for those that made it past my mouth and into my vessel -- was an ancient, pale blue Tupperware bowl from which I also ate my morning cereal.

But not on early summer nights.

On early summer nights, I would traipse back across the street; receive the requisite scolding, "Landis Paul!" from my mother, horrified at the sight of my completely purple feet, hands, lips, and tongue; and head into the bathroom. Scrubbed clean and wearing my jammies, I'd sit on the back porch watching lightening bugs, awaiting my mother's tough love: the Tupperware bowl filled with berries, sprinkled with sugar and swimming in a soup of whole milk.

She never was very good with punishments, that mother of mine. I think she picked a few mulberries in her day, too.