Strawberry Season

They look like little bloody hearts: strawberries. In fact, the image is equally as weighty in my personal preference as the taste. The taste is not so much different from very sweet blood, especially those that are picked at the peak of their season—late Spring, early Summer. Each one looks like it should have a tiny hammer and sickle in its side, it’s a proletariat treat and currently you can purchase a box at the .99 cent store. That’s right, for the last few weeks, good strawberries grown here in California have been available for a buck. Life is good.

As a kid, it wasn’t chocolate that I preferred, but strawberry. I remember that as a very special gift, my mom might buy us powdered strawberry to add to our milk. After school we would return home and flip on the television (fuck homework, we were free), and either my sister or I would concoct some of those strawberry drinks. Of course they had nothing to do with actual fresh strawberries, the chemical powder was a laboratory experiment in commerce, but it was pink and sweet and special. Not the muddy, oily murk of chocolate sauce staring back at us from the bottom of the glass, but lighter, almost as if they’d captured some essence of Spring—the short haul before Summer’s desultory harnesslessness.

It went for everything, my preference for strawberry, but especially ice cream. When my mother brought home those rectangular boxes of cheap Von’s ice cream, she had 5 kids to consider and so Neapolitan was her compromise. You know those vertically layered triplets of Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate: they were the Holy Trinity of flavors-- a metaphorical sermon on sacrifice and reward. I’d have to dig around the bordering flavors to scoop the rose heart from the center of the container, leaving the tasteless bean-derived Vanilla and Chocolate to my unknowing siblings. Think about it a second, would you rather a gooey, sticky cold taste of berries, or the brackish, hard aftertaste of crushed beans? I distanced myself from the rest of my family, I exhibited a rarefied knowledge of the “better things.” Strawberry was definitely not for dopes. I need only mention Strawberry Pop-Tarts to prove my point.

Years swept by:

*Strawberry Alarm Clock a band I once saw in a gym in 1967 complete with a “light show.” It contained the guy who now plays guitar in I SEE HAWKS IN L.A.
*Strawberry Statement with Kim Darby, Bruce Davison, Bud Cort (1970). Made me want to move to Berkeley, smoke pot and protest.
*Strawberry Fields Forever, Beatles
*Daryl Strawberry, troubled slugger on the tolerated Mets and the hated Dodgers
*Strawberry Shortcake Doll for my daughter
*Strawberry Switchblade, a Scottish girl band from the 80’s who had a hit, “Since Yesterday.” The song was played on the soundtrack for the 2006 Brit film THIS IS ENGLAND by Shane Meadows. Good movie.
*“Strawberry” a song by Boss Hog on that album where a girl in silhouette holds an umbrella
* As I recall “strawberry” was also a street term for a crack whore.
*Strawberry Panic, a Japanese manga about 3 exclusive girl's schools and the lesbian love affairs of the students. I think it's for kids, kinda.

But my best memories of strawberries came after I moved from Los Angeles to Ventura. Anyone who knows agriculture knows Ventura and its adjacent town of Oxnard. The BEST strawberries ever grown are from the fields of Ventura and Oxnard. Driving the back roads through the fields, one can always come upon a fresh fruit stand where some of that day’s pickings are offered for sale at very reasonable prices. They sell other fruits and vegetables in season, but it’s the strawberry season, especially the peak strawberry season that is important. Oxnard even has an annual Strawberry Festival Fair that was once probably an interesting event, growing out of the farmers' and buyers' pride in their product. Unfortunately, since then it's deteriorated into a crass money grab, you know the scheme: $10.00 to park, $10.00 admittance, a few rides for the kids but mostly booths run by the same people you see at the street fairs, Summer Days fair, art walks etc. Lots of wind chimes, portable kitchens selling teriyaki bowls, and tie-dyed t-shirts for the kiddies with a big bright strawberry in the center. The best souvenir we ever walked away with was a pop-gun for my son. It was memorable because our family was against all war toys, to the strident extent that I actually snipped the rifles and six-guns from the little plastic “Cowboys and Indians” set which I gave my son for Christmas one year. The pop-gun was hand-made from wood and shot a cork from its muzzle which was tied to a string. It seemed a piece of 1920’s Americana and I was beginning to feel pretty silly at the degree to which we had tried to hide guns from the children's lives. We’d lost balance somehow. The gun was cool.

Yes, Ventura’s fresh strawberries were plentiful, inexpensive and delicious. Luckily, Blake, my unmarried mate, lover, and mother of my son was an amazing pie-maker. She liked to experiment while in the kitchen, which wasn’t always successful when dealing with some dishes, but her home-made fruit pies were the stuff of gastronomic hallelujahs. And the funny thing was that she’d knock them out with seeming ease and frequency. The crusts were that late Summer color seen in the tall grasses which grew on the hillsides on the road to Ojai, and maybe included a spattering of darker rust here and there where she had brushed the top with soft butter midway through the pie’s exposure in the oven. The house smelled like a good J.D. Salinger story and she usually played some contemporary Klezmer music on the stereo, or practiced her piano or clarinet skills while waiting for the baked goods to cool. Strawberries were my favorite. The warm juices and molten sugar permeated the bottom crust so that a slice usually leaked a tiny amount onto the plate. The juice tasted of a Jean Giono novel from Provence, there was an earthy bite to the sweet berries and the perfect crust. I don’t know baking, I merely know eating, however I believe that the crust is of key importance to any pie or baked good. Blake had some mysterious proficiency with her crusts which never once failed. Never once. With the exception of the children’s good grades, it was one of the only constants of those years--Blake’s pies.

For every instant, and every bite of those pies I am truly grateful. Life has changed, Ventura has changed, times and situations have taken on a multitude of directions which are different than those years we lived in Ventura. I’ll always be thankful for them, and even these lesser strawberries I buy at the .99 cent store trigger memories I keep in some crypto-transcendental wallet where good times are always available. Bloody hearts they are.





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