luck - your tree is gone. So it pays to watch your 

 orchard. Was a time when yer didn't need to 

 spray your trees. But you do now - two-three 

 times. 



Well, I goes down into the orchard and asks 

 what they was doing. They told me. And I 

 asked what kind of trees these was. 'Baldwins," 

 they told me. A few of 'em are, I admitted. But 

 most of 'em is Gravensteins. "Oh, no!" Says the 

 Doc, "that can't be! It was a reliable firm we 

 bought them of and they was guaranteed 

 Baldwins - a 'specially good brand.' "Well," I 

 says, "You still get your little book? Now, put it 

 down, so you won't forget it, or tie a string 

 around the trees, or somethin', and you just 

 wait 'til theys apples on 'em and see.' 



But they didn't wait. The brother sold out to 

 a poor, little runt of a mean, miserable, cuss 

 that I don't want nothin' to do with. But I didn't 

 know what a kind of low-lived skunk he was 

 then, so I tried to be neighborly. I asked him 

 what kind of trees he had in his orchard. He 

 says that they was Baldwins. That that was 

 what the ministers said that sold him the place. 

 "Well, they ain't," I says. "They is Gravensteins 

 - most of 'em." But they ain't no good!" he says. 



I told him I didn't think they was any good 

 myself- not even for cider. He wanted to know 

 how how I was so siire. And I showed him the 

 difference in the leaves. He thought he had 

 better wait and make sure before he did 

 anything about it. That it didn't seem to him 

 that ministers would lie. I told him he needn't 

 wait to find that out. That everybody in 

 Northfield knowed that ministers are the 

 biggest liars they is, 'cause they honestly 

 believe their lies themselves. That if he aimed 

 to become a bonnie fidie resident of Northfield, 

 he'd better find that out, and learn to set one 

 against the other. That some places you needed 

 lawyers to do business for you, but here in 

 Northfield you needed ministers, and if you 

 didn't have one you were all out of luck. 



He was going to cut down the Gravensteins 

 but I told him no, and showed him how to graft 

 'em with scions fi-om the Baldwins. The little 

 cuss never did it, though, he turned out to be too 

 dimab lazy. That old fool was over eighty when 

 he broke his hip. It mended good as new. The 

 fall would a killed any decent person. And you 

 know the saying, "The Good Die Young." Guess 

 that's a fact. 



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Fruit Notes, Volume 62 (Number 2), Spring, 1997 



25 



