Lemons for Sale

When I ring the doorbell it chimes a chorus of Hooray for the Red, White and Blue that lasts about 20 seconds. The Italian couple who live here are old, and I guess this gives them a good chance to answer the door.

The first two times I was here the old man answered. The last time it was his wife.

Today it’s the old man’s turn, again. It’s very hot and he’s wearing baggy underwear, but they’re navy blue so I say, ‘Oh, you are in your shorts.’

‘Yeh,’ he says standing half way between buying into my relief tactic and excusing himself.

He’ll be right back.

I’ll wait.

I’m here about lemons. Paul and I are on a health kick and have been drinking lemon juice every day for about three months. This time I’m not sure if I’ll be buying. They’ve doubled in price.

I’m standing in the shade of the patio and looking around. There’s a hook with lots of old plastic shopping bags on it. They’re pink and blue and green and gray. The one at the front has something in it to keep the others from floating away. There’s an old Formica topped table with old Styrofoam boxes pushed to the back of it. I see four bulbs of braided garlic on a nail that’s been pushed into the mortar of the brick wall. A little hand written sign reads “$2 each”.

He’s back.

‘The lemons,’ I say, ‘The sign says they’re $20 dollars.’

‘Yeh,’ he says nodding, ‘Not twenty.’

I ignore that statement.

‘Last time they were $10,’ I say.

‘Yeh,’ he says, walking with me to the footpath where he has his little stand set up for the passing traffic to see.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

‘They green,’ he states.

‘They’re what?’ I ask, looking into the boxes of lemons sitting in his wheelbarrow.

‘They green.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘They’re green? Oh, I see. They’re green! Yes, a little green! Why green? Not ripe!’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Is it because of all the rain?’ I ask, raising my shoulders and turning my palms to the sky. 

What the hell do I know about growing lemons?

‘Yeh. Maybe rain.’

‘When will they be yellow again?’

photo by Dom

‘Don’t know. Two months.’

‘Two months?!’

What’ll I do - ?

We stand together quietly for a minute and lament the situation.

‘Too much rain,’ he says.

‘What?’ but then I heard him and nodded.

The house is on a really main street. There’s a Barbeques Galore across the road and a Freedom Furniture, too. I know he and his wife have seen a lot of change over the years. There’s so much traffic now. Eight lanes just to cross the road.

They have thirteen lemon trees in their backyard. I asked last time I was here.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Umberto.’

‘Hi Umberto. Karen.’

‘Twelve dollar.’

‘Nah.’

‘Twelve.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeh.’ He always has sleep in his eyes.

I know the drill now, so I’ve brought my own bag. We load it up. He keeps the Styrofoam box.

‘Umberto, did you grow the garlic?’

He gives me a look that says, ‘What do you think.’

And I think, ‘Well, there’s a big difference between lemons and garlic.’

But I say, ‘Can I buy one?’

He says, ‘Four.’

‘Four?’

Who needs all that garlic?

‘Four.’

‘Ok. All four together?’

‘Yeh, four.’

‘Ok. Two dollars each?’

‘Yeh. Twenty dollar for all.’

‘Ok. Gotcha. Here’s twenty.’

‘Thank you.’

‘See ya next time.’

‘Next time. Yeh,’ Umberto smiles.

The Hike

It was dead set in the middle of September and I was at 9000 feet with a group of people I had signed up to hike with for a week in the Austrian Alps. The nights and mornings were cold, but the days were divine.

We’d just spent the night in a hutte with no running water except for one flushing toilet to service 200 people. The place was under renovation and we had to walk up scaffolding to get to our rooms from the main floor where the dining room, bar and patio were.

We dined on boiled potatoes with condiments and I drank half a beer. I could barely keep my eyes opened due to all the climbing and fresh air I had taken in. I was bushed and headed to bed before the sun fully set.

When I got to our room, Brett and Kathy were already tucked up in bed and I climbed the ladder high up to my bunk in the corner near the window. Brett, a book worm had brought a half a dozen books in his pack and asked us if we wanted him to read us a fairy tale from his favourite philosopher, the German Friedrich Nietzsche. We could hardly think of anything more environmentally appropriate to do, and heartily agreed to his offer.

Just as Kathy and I were drifting off, and Brett was getting ready to extinguish his headlamp, the rest of the gang started filtering in completely oblivious to our tranquil setting. Shawn, the alpha female amongst us was fun, and always made sure everyone else was happy too. Tonight she jumped from bed to bed and splashed us with a magic sleeping potion that she had pulled from her bag.

Check out time in Hutte country is early, and with the renovations going on, the place was buzzing with tradesmen as we finished our packing and tied our shoe laces. The guys must have realised that they could smart-ass those of us who didn’t speak their language and in the hallways a couple of them tried it on me.

‘Imagine,’ I think one guy said, ‘you are on this trail for a week and you have no idea what’s going on out there in the rest of the world. It could all be over, as far as you know.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said back to him, ‘I’m sick of thinking about all that ‘20-12’ stuff. Floods, fires, famine, wars? Is all this because we’ve behaved so poorly over the past, what? – fifty years? Is this because everyone wants to drive a car and have a cell phone? I haven’t done anything so bad that I should have to worry about being ‘done in’ all the time by a greater force – have I? There’s a lot of strife about things that I don’t even care about, or think about or even know about!

‘Why are we supposed to be afraid? Is it creature comforts? Rest assured I feel guilty for them. Is it energy? Guilty for food, guilty for the joy ride, definitely guilty for the air-conditioner. Yep, guilty. I say – guilt be gone – god-damn-it! Be gone!

‘And, besides,’ I paused bashfully, ‘Mein mann ist ein plumber – I’ll be fine.’

‘Was?’ he asked – German for ‘what?’

‘Ja. Mein mann ist ein plumber,’ I didn’t know the word for plumber in German. I really hadn’t understood what he had said in the first place, so if he was being friendly, I thought I’d let him know that I could relate to his trade.

‘Er arbeitet mit wasser,’ I said, ‘ – und toiletten? – verstehen sie toiletten?’

‘Was?’ he asked again.

Maybe this guy didn’t even speak German.

‘Never mind,’ I said, ‘it’s okay.’

I made my way out to the cold and designated stone footing where I’d seen other hikers brushing their teeth and splashing water on their faces from a temporary outdoor water supply. I started to brush, but soon slipped and crashed to the ground, my face inches from the frozen spit and toothpaste of the 199 others before me. My water bottle bounced and splintered down the rocky drop and landed about 15 metres away.

I looked up. Nobody was there to see me or to help me. I wanted to cry. But I’m not a crier. I let out a little peep, but it sounded wrong. It’s just not me. I got up and collected my toothpaste and toothbrush on my way down to the water bottle. The lever was cracked, but the bottle wasn’t. It was still useable. I gave it a hug. I wanted to cry again, this time with tears of sentiment, but I decided to forget it. I’d better not keep people waiting. So I scurried off to meet my team.

The path in the distance that I couldn’t quite make out was where we were headed. It was steep in an upward direction with a promise of a steep decline on the other side of the ridge. Another reason to cry, I thought, but it would have taken too much energy. I could barely breathe. When we reached the saddle of the mountain there was a giddy sense of celebration and my mood changed. I knew I could handle the cable descent and the loose rocky path that followed down to the lake below us. I like going down.

The lake was a good resting spot. Besides, Johann, one of our members, had taken a tumble part of the way down and needed bandaging and reassuring by his pretty wife Ursula. They, along with Martina were part of the German contingency that joined our group at the last minute. They were lovely people and very strong hikers. 

Our guide Charlie and the Germans weren't accustomed to taking breaks. On the few occasions that we dropped our packs and sat on the ground, they stood smiling at us ready to race on. Charlie has hiked these trails for years and guides groups all summer long. He’s strong. I think he could do our week long hike in a day and a half; he was always in a hurry to get to the next spot, lunch or lodging.  

I’d say you could call Charlie a playboy. He’s bright and sparkly and pretty flirtatious. It seemed he had a waitress rushing through our dinner service at all the hotels and huttes we stayed at, so that she could sit beside him and kick her legs back and forth with a glass of wine before the evening ended.

Charlie and our host Franz are best buddies from their Austrian childhood. Franz can hike as well as Charlie and he knows all the peaks, wildflowers and geology by name. Franz is married to Carol. Together they organised the hike that turned a lot of strangers’ into friends.  They and their children live in Wyoming and run one of the best lodges in Jackson Hole – ‘Teton View Bed, Breakfast and Beyond’.

Lynda and I didn’t plan it, we ‘if’ed’ it. We decided before the hike that ‘if’ we felt like taking a day off the trail we could. We decided to do that on the last day of our hike, and made the announcement at breakfast. While the rest of the group disappeared into the canyon behind us, we asked the hotel concierge, aka Charlie’s last girlfriend, for travel advice that would help to reunite us with our group at the end of the day.

The concierge assured us that with little traffic coming and going in town the only way out would be by bus. Hitchhiking was not an option.

Well, we hitched a ride from the first car that came by. The husband and wife took us 10km’s out of their way where they let us off at the Alpine border between Austria and Italy called Timmelsjoch Pass. It was gray and windy as Lynda and I huddled together and walked arm in arm to the lone toll booth.

In my nicest German, I asked the guard if we could hitchhike from the other side of the crossing. He said a few things that sounded very seriously like ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ to me, then laughed. So we laughed. He pointed for us to stand over there.

Cool.

We waited to see what would happen next.

Mr Potato-man, or more respectfully ‘the potato farmer’, was the third vehicle to cross the summit. The passengers in the first two cars drove by gesturing apologetically that they hadn’t any room to carry us to a new location. The border guard was hitching our ride for us, and the potato farmer was happy enough to have us tag along.

Lynda and I hopped into the back seat of his twin cab truck. The front passenger seat and floor were full of potatoes and dry clumps of dirt.

The narrow winding road ahead took us through little villages and steep valleys, and we established that this trip with a trailer attached was a weekly event to sell his goods.

At a fork in the road he pulled over and asked us if we wanted to be dropped off to continue hitchhiking directly to the town of San Leonardo or meander slowly with him while he dropped in on his customers on the longer way to town.

Before we left that morning Lynda asked me, ‘Karen, what are we wishing for?’

‘Adventure!’ I said, ‘Let’s not just shop, and eat, and drink coffee.’

So, we went with him the long way, on even narrower and windier roads.

We went to a resort, some restaurants, and a couple of little grocery stores to visit his clients. Sometimes we got out and went in with him, but mostly we sat like little captives in the back seat and waited. Eventually we turned down a road that was so narrow Lynda and I could have touched the trees from our respective windows, if we had tried.

Lynda poked at me and said, ‘He’s making strange faces and keeps looking back here.’

‘Is he looking at both of us, or just you?’ I asked.

‘He can’t see you over there,’ she said. ‘He’s just looking at me.’

‘We’ll be ok,’ I said, placating her as I surveyed the surroundings. Danger hadn’t been on my agenda all day. It had been pretty nice. But, what about all those religious roadside markers we’d been passing on this little stretch of forested road? Just who were they erected for? Was it was time for me to sit up and pay attention?

I caught Lynda’s eye, then quietly unzipped my fanny pack. She watched as I thumbed through it and pulled on my gloves. What was I looking for? Ah-ha! Dental floss! I took it out, held it up, shook it gently and looked serenely at Lynda.

I mouthed the obvious, ‘Dental floss.’

Lynda looked at me as if to say, ‘What the hell?’

Very quietly I opened the box and tore off about 18 inches of my preferred floss – waxed. I put it back in my pack and zipped it up.

Deftly, like I have done a thousand times before, I wrapped each end around an index finger, formed a little knuckle, and then gave the floss a tug.

‘He’s chubby and he’s old,’ I whispered, ‘If we have to run, let’s hope he falls over. I’m sure he’ll have trouble getting up. If we can’t get out of the car, I’m going to choke him,’ I snickered as I looked at the string between my hands. 

Lynda didn’t laugh, but I was only half joking. Hitchhiking is a delicate game of cat and mouse; a testament to the high levels of stress that I sit comfortably with.

I leaned forward, and asked him how much further until we reached town. He held the back of his right hand up towards me while he continued to navigate our narrow path.

With his big fingers spread wide, he said ‘Funf.’

I sat back.

‘We’re almost there,’ I said to Lynda.

We arrived in San Leonardo five minutes later and stepped out of the truck at Mr Potato Man’s next stop, a little market stall in the centre of town.

When we arrived at our hotel in the tiny village of Schnalstal the manager wouldn’t let us in our room until Charlie arrived, so we sat and waited. We had thought of hiking up to meet the others on the trail, but were sort of just glad to be there. Finally, as in all good fairy tales, we were reunited with our group. They came down from the mountain two and three at a time, and we were all very happy to see each other safe.

That night we toasted our success with a last supper. We had lots to celebrate. It was Kathy’s birthday and Peter bought us wine. It was Ursula and Johann’s anniversary and they treated us to Willie – a pear liqueur. Shawn and Rocco were on their honeymoon, and we had all just hiked the E5 trail!

When I went to bed it was raining. I stood and looked out the window for a few minutes and wished we had had more time together. By the morning September snows were falling, and we piled into the bus that was scheduled to take us back towards civilisation or at least to life as we knew it.

When I was about nine years old we went to a place called Miniature Switzerland. I couldn’t understand why we were there because the real Switzerland was just outside the gate behind us. I knew the idea was to be able to see Switzerland in its entirety, and to walk from one Canton to the next with a bird’s eye view of each of Switzerland’s landmarks, but it seemed irrelevant to me, since in reality that couldn’t happen.

‘Is this place for kids or grown ups?’ I asked my friend Lis.

‘It’s for tourists,’ she said.

‘For tourists?’ I asked, ‘Why?’

‘Well, for people to come and see Switzerland all at once,’ said Lis.

‘But it’s not real,’ I said, ‘So, it’s not like they’re really seeing anything.’

‘Well, it is real, Karen,’ Lis said, ‘It’s like model airplanes. They’re real, and people find them interesting.’

‘Are we still in Switzerland?’ I wanted to know, ‘Or is this another country?’

There are so many borders in Europe, one never really knows.

‘We’re still in Switzerland.’

‘There are better places to see than this,’ I sulked. Miniature Switzerland didn’t meet up to my expectations. I think I might have been looking for miniature everything, including live cows and people, and was a bit humiliated when I realised my imagination had gotten the best of me.   

‘Why are we here?’ I whined again, ‘Will you show me someplace here that I’ve been to in real life?’

I’d have rather been splashing around on the shores of Lake Lugano where we had been camping the previous two nights – car camping that is: four of us sleeping in a Fiat 500. I guess my real problem with ‘Swissminiatur’ could have been due to lack of sleep. My shared spot in the back seat was short on leg room and horizontal space. But that’s where Lis’s mom, Pat, felt we were safest and she was the guardian of the three of us – her 13 year old daughter, my 17 year old sister, Susan, and me.

                             

A day after our plan to go on a road trip was hatched, I watched my father hand Pat a wad of cash, and we were on our way! The drive to the Gotthard Pass is reputed to be less than three hours from Bern, but I suspect we had a few stops to make, so our car rolled over the last mountain rise, at 7000 ft, around dusk. 


From just outside of what was to be our last tunnel for the day our concerns over where we’d spend our first night vanished as we spotted a welcoming hotel nestled into a gray rocky backdrop. We however took the budget option and registered at the hotel’s associated hütte, located a short walk up the darkening canyon. A hütte is like a bunk house. We went straight to the restaurant.

The restaurant was very quiet. Perhaps it was too early for most diners or perhaps it was just a quiet time of the week. The last of the day's sun shone through the bevelled glass windows and dozen's of prisms shot across the room. I was so impressed, because I had only seen a prism once before, on a ceiling of a friends house, coming off a crystal decanter. That and this I remember for sure…

There was just one other guest being served by our waitress; a dark haired man dressed in shorts. He was from Italy or France declared Pat, maybe from southern Switzerland. His self-assuredness was what brought him to our attention, and Pat thought he looked, ‘A bit cocky.’

But more importantly to his description was that with his shorts, and very short shorts they were indeed, he was wearing dress shoes and socks. He sat across the dining room from us, smoking his Gauloises cigarette, and intently, yet nonchalantly shoving his exposed left testicle back into place. Being nine, this was a first, but I really wasn’t fazed. Pat, Susan and Lis on the other hand started squealing with apparent delight but making expressions of disgust. At first it seemed a joyous occasion to me, but at that age I often took part in things I didn’t understand.

There was some conversation about breasts, which I presumed Pat was the primary target, but Pat disagreed defensively and passed the baton on to Susan who pointed out that Lis had also developed quite a beautiful profile over the recent months.

‘Profile?’ I asked.

It seemed that the possession of breasts had something to do with the testicle poking smoking threat. Emotionally I was expelled from the conversation.

‘If he’s in our hütte,' said Pat, 'we’re leaving.' Which I thought was a bit extreme considering we drove for hours to get there, it was nearly dark and we were in the middle of – you guessed it, nowhere.

I, for my part, felt for the first time ever, because I had no boobs, that I had a mannish duty to perform. If he came into our hütte, I’d employ some of those techniques my dad used to show me from time to time.

‘Now,’ I deliberated silently, ‘was it punch him in the stomach then knee him in the chin? Or – punch him in the stomach, then punch him in the nose so his eyes get watery and he can’t see, then knee him in the chin?’ As long as he didn’t fight back, I’d be fine. I knew the last part was to run as fast as I could. I’d yell out for the others to get a head start.

Finally, the man got up to leave, and bid us farewell. Being Swiss and Swiss trained we obliged with a friendly adieu and watched out the windows to see him drive off. Apparently the coast was clear.

Back in our hütte, we discovered that each half of the room contained 20 beds. Down the centre was a set of lockers. If that man in the shorts came back, he'd be sleeping on the opposite side to us. We decided not to unpack, because we’d be off first thing in the morning. 

That night, the window blew opened which scared the shit out of us and triggered another rant from Pat about leaving again. Once we decided that it was only the wind things settled down for a while, but then a rat started gnawing away under the floor near our beds. That was the start of our sleep deprivation.  

One night down, four to go. 

My brothers, sister and I on the Jungfrau - 1967

‘C’mon Karen,’ Lis said walking me in a direction of some miniature mountains, ‘Remember when we all went to stay in Wengen when your Grandma was here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, here is Wengen, and those are the mountains: the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau.’

‘I remember,’ I said, reciting and pointing from left to right, ‘The Ogre says to the Monk, ‘Don’t touch the Maiden.’’

‘Do you know what a maiden is?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a virgin,’ Lis grinned mischievously.

I smiled back, and then we both broke into hysterical laughter. I didn’t know what a virgin was, but it was still funny.

Forty years later my friend Lynda and I hopped on the last carriage of the train that would take us from Interlaken to Wengen.

As the train rounded the first bend we could see the front carriage heading through a huge meadow dotted with chalets and cows. This was my real Miniature Switzerland moment. I thought of what it would look like in the winter, the meadow and the chalet rooftops covered in thick snow, with smoke curling from the chimneys. I remembered the hush that often accompanies the snow, and thought of the antiquated activities that might still occur in a Swiss winter home.

Above the thick grassy meadow were the trees and mountainsides we were headed towards. We’d be in Wengen in about 45 minutes. I was looking for things I’d recognise from my past, but didn’t really see anything until we arrived and started walking up the hill from the train station towards our hotel. There were so many chalets I couldn’t dream of spotting the one we had stayed at in the summer of 1967 but I looked sentimentally towards the valley to the east.

We stayed at the old Hotel Falkner. The floors and staircase were covered in worn Persian rugs, and the walls with old photographs of ski teams and race winners. Our beds were made of eiderdown blankets so thick they would measure over 18 inches high, and our room’s balcony faced the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau. They were so close, so breathtaking.

The view from our room

Most of the guests at the Falkner were elderly English people who had been coming year after year to hike the local trails each summer with their binoculars and bird books. Their visits ending only, I imagine when the annual trek across the Channel and France becomes to long and tiring for them, and the high altitude air in the Swiss Alps too thin. 

                                                         Ah, Mortality, you are never far from my thoughts.

But mortality is always in the air and in Europe it is an undeniable reality that all things will come to pass. I speak now of our hike from Kleine Scheidegg to Wengen where we were lucky enough to meet a kind hunter, local to the area. He was tall and slim and dressed in hunters-greens. He was armed with a small pack and around his neck a pair of Army issued binoculars. What brought him to our attention was the rifle slung over his shoulder.

The Hunter

‘Are you going to shoot something?’ we asked, wide eyed like Heidi and Red Riding Hood.

‘I hope so,’ he spoke quietly, and gestured to the mountainside where he told us a lone chamois was about 300 metres off the trail. He’d have to get to within 100 metres to have a good chance of shooting it, and if he did, that afternoon he’d have to take it down to Interlaken to have the kill certified before coming back to Wengen to sell it to a local restaurant. He shared his binoculars with us and we saw the chamois. He had work to do, so we were on our way.

The Chamois

Our host at Hotel Falkner, Riccardo, possessed a boyish charm. He was a smooth good looking guy around our age who suggested Lynda and I go to a restaurant called Allmend for fondue. So, when he sauntered past our window seat about half an hour after we arrived there we invited him to join us.

Riccardo ordered a steak that was about an inch and a half thick and a bottle of wine to share. Then, he proceeded to treat us to the charming tales of his fearless childhood in Wengen: of playing in the woods in summer into the night and skiing outside the avalanche boundaries in winter. He grew up with his parents, but felt most at home under the loving arm of his grandparents whose chalet he ran to after school, and on the odd occasion that he was scolded at home. One day, when he was very little, he told us, he took a five Franc coin from his grandfather’s bureau and went down to the local bar to treat himself to a lemonade. The bartender obliged without charge, but after a little chit-chat with his young customer snuck off to alert Riccardo’s grandfather. His grandfather came down to the bar to join him for a drink and to make sure Riccardo was minding his manners. To this day, says Riccardo the story is local folklore.

Fact is, we met a few locals in Wengen. They grow up there and head off to seek their fortunes. Wengen is always in their hearts, so when the time is right, they return to its comfort and beauty, to a space in their world that is waiting for them – the bosom of familiarity: the place of their youth.

 PS: I know one or two of you will love this link. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne-Thompson_classification_system