Ken brought home blackberries from Stop ‘n’ Shop yesterday. This is not an unusual occurrence. He loves fresh fruit and this time of year it appears in great abundance, if not of great quality. We were both arriving home from different directions and met up in the basement where he was sampling the blackberries and succeeded in spilling about a third of one container of blackberries at the base of his workbench. As I arrived, he was reaching for the dustpan and brush. I looked at the plump, luscious looking blackberries on the basement floor and Ken wielding the dustpan. “Don’t do that”, I may have shrieked. He stopped in his tracks. 

“What’s up?” he queried. 

“I will get them!”

“You’re going to eat blackberries off the basement floor?!” He sounded astonished because he perceives me to be the more fastidious of the two.

“I’m going to wash them!”

I proceeded to pick them up by hand, placing them back in the container with those which had not spilled. Some had rolled under the workbench and I stretched and reached as far as I could. When I had retrieved all that I could see, we both went upstairs. I got out a pretty, flowered bowl, placed the berries in it and got some cold, filtered water from the refrigerator door. After I double rinsed them, I tasted one. It was well worth the effort. These berries were as good as Mr. Zomzelli’s berries, who was my neighbor from my childhood.

Life was very different in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. Neighbors were generally very friendly. I lived between a vacant lot and Mr. Zomzelli. He had a rather large piece of property, easily two or three times the size of my parent’s yard. His property went up a hill, and on this incline, about two thirds the way up the hill, was a patch of blackberry bushes. He sometimes brought berries to my mother. When I was about three years old, I took to exploring my yard and accidentally wandered into his yard. I discovered the source of these delicious berries. There were quite a few blackberry bushes in his yard and I may have sampled a few on several different occasions. One day, I got “caught” and I started to run away, but Mr. Zomzelli said to me, “You don’t have to run away. I just wanted to tell you that you may pick the berries. There are too many for me to enjoy and they will go to waste if someone doesn’t eat them.”

After that, for the remainder of the summer, I was a regular visitor to the blackberries and they have lived in my memory as the best blackberries that I ever tasted. Every berry that I tasted in my 70+ years have been evaluated against Mr. Zomzelli’s blackberries and not meeting the standard…that is until today. Ken, you did it. You have fulfilled my childhood fantasy for blackberry excellence. In my imagination, at least, these berries from Stop ‘n’ Shop, through some circuitous journey through time and space, are related to those of my childhood neighbor…and I didn’t even have to pick them.