My summer memories are not from the Mifflin or Juniata Counties. I didn’t know these counties existed until my family moved here when I was approaching my mid-forties some 30-plus years ago.

The family I grew up in didn’t have any favorite or regular activities or traditions and only twice took a vacation that was more than a one day trip to another part of Pennsylvania. Only two of 12 cousins lived in Pennsylvania. As the oldest child of my parents, I had occasions to meet more cousins that lived far away than my four siblings had, but only a few times in my lifetime. Both of my parents were the youngest child in their family of origin, so most of my cousins were pre-teens or older by the time I came along, and at that age, even if my parents took a two to four hour trip one way to visit, those cousins were of an age to be heavily involved with sports, summer jobs or friends their own age rather than little kids they barely knew. As a result, I don’t have fond memories of family reunions or repeated summer fun with cousins either. But I do recall one activity I enjoyed that was repeated several times over about three summers.

Two months after I turned 12, my parents moved our family of six to a nearby community within the same county, just outside Philadelphia. It was one week before Christmas, and just two weeks before my youngest brother’s arrival made us a family of seven. I had one week in my new junior high before Christmas break, to try to meet new classmates and get acclimated to new teachers, navigate to new classrooms in a new building. As a parent myself who moved just six weeks after my fourth child arrived, I now have a more compassionate understanding of the changes my parents and siblings were navigating, but at the time, I felt very lost and alone. Those feelings were still pretty much with me as that summer rolled around, but I had met two neighbor girls that were my age and rode the same bus to school.

My new home was more in the country, with a nearby golf course and farmers’ fields, some of which were being excavated for new homes. Our house was set in a wooded lot, with a small stream running from the 1700’s spring house across the street, under our street and into the woods behind our home. As spring broke through the cold, icy winter, my oldest siblings and I began exploring the woods behind our home, and critters that resided in the creek. We learned that other children in the neighborhood were well acquainted not only with the wooded lot, but the delights it harbored for spring and summer snacking.

There were red and black wild cherry trees to climb and pick from, or to push thin branches lower for a companion to do the picking. There were sassafras seedlings that provided root beer flavored roots to chew on. There were wild raspberries and tiny wild strawberries. (The best place to fill a bucket with those was a half mile up the road around an old blue water tower.) As we wandered around mounds of dirt dug up for another new house in the development across the street, we found huge carrots, turnips, onions and later, abandoned corn stalks still bearing ears of corn. About mid-summer, one of the neighbor kids introduced us to a driveway lined with a dozen or so varieties of apples. There were at least two of each kind of apple, one on each side of the curving driveway up to the former stone barn that had belonged to the 1700’s mansion and springhouse across the street from our home. The inhabitants of the barn-house had small children and busy lives that didn’t allow time for picking or doing anything with the apples, so they were delighted to have neighbor children climb trees and pick as many apples as we wanted. Every few weeks there was a different variety ready to try.

As fall approached, another neighbor had three kinds of pear trees that supplemented the apples. He was not as generous with us, but if he was in a good mood and we asked nicely before picking, we could sometimes each have one or two pears.

Perhaps there were yet other prizes to find and consume, but there is only one more I clearly remember, that we didn’t gain access to until a year, maybe two, later. Another neighbor had a daughter about two years younger than me and the crew I’d gotten to know. As she reached near junior high age, her parents began to allow her to roam our haunts with us. She had three mulberry trees in her front yard, which became another stop in our seasonal hunt for treats. It was through spending time with her that I learned her family was Jewish, and because of that, her family was not allowed to join the local pool, or enter certain other establishments. She had reached an age where her parents knew they needed to allow her to make friends with non-Jewish youth and interact with neighbors. I was invited to go along to swim at a pool that was almost exclusively visited by Jewish people. It took us 45 minutes or so to get there. None of the other private or community pools would allow them to join because of their faith. I also was introduced to some different foods as I was invited to stay for dinner sometimes.

So my “Remember When,” is tied to food, and fellowship, but not in the sense of picnics and barbecues. Rather, as part of a pack of neighborhood youth roaming an area mostly within the equivalent of a few blocks to a quarter mile, in search of summer snacks. By the time I was about to enter high school (10th grade in that area then) most of us were finding other interests, but by then I had a three-year-old brother, and eight-year-old brother, with whom I could appear to be giving “science lessons” on occasion that just happened to result in fruits of the seasons.