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unusualmusic_lj_archiveI just opened one such bottle today. The sweet, fresh taste, without the bitter note that i have always been subliminally aware of, took me by surprise. We used to have about 8 orange trees back home. There were Navel, Parson Brown, [Dad says not this variety], Seville, Sweet and some other varieties which I can't remember now. (I'll have to ask Dad). We'd pick them from the trees and either eat them there and then or head directly to the basement, where we use hand juicers and squeeze them. And drink them straight. The juice was cool for the trees were in the shade. My father used to experimentally graft various varieties in order to get as sweet an orange as possible. When you bit into our oranges, the juice exploded in your mouth and ran down your mouth corners. Our oranges were huge. some were bigger than my adult hand. I never eat oranges here. They too small, taste awful and are hard to peel. I hate orange juice made from concentrate. It is so inferior compared to ours that it frankly insults the name "orange juice" in my mind. I don't savor it. I gulp it down to avoid the taste.
Today I took a big mouthful and stopped, staring. The taste exploded in my mouth. And images, of my sister climbing the Navel orange tree right outside our front door and swinging from the branches; of me picking huge oranges on a cloudy afternoon; of me pausing in my Saturday morning sweeping of my upstairs balcony to watch the astonishing shade of shiny yellow the morning sun displays as it hits the dew on that same Navel Orange Tree; of the sharp orange of the sunset hitting the trees in the cow pasture's fence; these and many more memories escape that dark box and explode forcefully in my mind. I cannot believe that I had forgotten orange juice is supposed to taste. I didn't gulp this mouthful down. I let it trickle down my throat, slowly. The label says that its Valencia oranges.I don't think I have had this variety before, but I may be wrong. [I am wrong. Dad says we did. ]My memory can be very unreliable sometimes. I let my sister taste it. I decided that I am done with concentrate.
Today I took a big mouthful and stopped, staring. The taste exploded in my mouth. And images, of my sister climbing the Navel orange tree right outside our front door and swinging from the branches; of me picking huge oranges on a cloudy afternoon; of me pausing in my Saturday morning sweeping of my upstairs balcony to watch the astonishing shade of shiny yellow the morning sun displays as it hits the dew on that same Navel Orange Tree; of the sharp orange of the sunset hitting the trees in the cow pasture's fence; these and many more memories escape that dark box and explode forcefully in my mind. I cannot believe that I had forgotten orange juice is supposed to taste. I didn't gulp this mouthful down. I let it trickle down my throat, slowly. The label says that its Valencia oranges.
