Sweet, Red Cherries

Like I said before - sweet summer fruit takes me back to my younger years when I spent the summers running through the fruit orchards of Washington state without a care in the world.

These cherries reminded me of a funny story.

My sister, brother and I would let our imaginations run as wild as we did while we were playing in the fields, hunting worms and imitating birds.

One time - we had the great idea of taking the ripe cherries off the tree and squish them between our fingers to see what would happen.

Well - as you can imagine - the sweet, red cherry juice would run through our fingers and down our arms turning the skin a pretty red color.

We decided then and there to strip down to our undies and rub the cherry juice all over ourselves to see how red we could become.

Believe me - it took a lot of cherries and most of the afternoon to accomplish this task.

I cannot even tell you how mortified my aunt was when the three of us arrived home just in time for dinner. All three of us spent the evening in the bathtub trying to scrub this red stain off of each other.

Little did we know that the very next day we were suppossed to attend a wedding in town.

We went to the wedding - dressed in our Sunday best. However, my aunt could not hide the fact that all three of us were still as red as the sweet cherries we spent all afternoon picking.