Growing in Berkeley

There was a kumquat tree in the courtyard of our apartment building. In the summer we attached bicycle tires to the forceful branches and made swings. If one were to rest too long on the circular rubber it would make marks in our back sides, so we cushioned the inner-tubes with sweatshirts and towels for long-lasting swing comfort.

That tree was always full of kumquats. The hundreds of people who dwelled in that massive compound never noticed the soft sweetness of those tiny Chinese oranges. Maybe it was always there so we didn’t perceive it. That seems to be the way it goes, you never know the blessing of a tree of free ripe fruit until you’re in a foreign supermarket staring at your own urban oranges, expected to shell out 10 dollars for a kilo.

In Berkeley we had so many kumquat trees, plum trees and blackberry bushes. On my block there was a man with a large lemon tree and in the summer when all the fruit was at its juiciest we used to get sticks and whack the fruits from the neighborhood foliage. We used to pull out the edges of our t-shirts and make pouches for the fruits, the juice from which inevitably stained the cotton.

Most of the trees and bushes were sort of on public property, except for the lemons. These we would sequester by sticking our childhood hands through fence holes while grabbing the yellow rinds.

I never cared much for yellow citrus, but when you’re seven and broke you have to figure out a way to make some money. My friends and I would borrow our mothers’ sugar and take water from the tap to make lemonade. When we did not have lemons, we made kool-aid and would sell it in Dixie cups for a quarter. Our adult patrons frequently tipped us generously. Not because we had produced superb beverages, but because we reminded them of the times when they sold icy libations to summer thirsters.

On the weekends I would collect my coins and go to the flea markets. For a dollar, I would buy bubble necklaces, colored bangles and poppers from wholesale venders.

People, where I lived, used to be bighearted with food, but flowers were another story. Old women and some elder men invested countless hours in their gardens and would run you over with their walkers or beat you with their canes if you dared lay a finger on their impeccable rose patches.

My mother loved flowers and a festive, free bouquet of flora was a great gift for a jobless youngster to give her parent. One day I decided to collect a creative assortment of local flowers. Because I did not want anyone in my neighborhood to catch me, I convinced my friend to join me on the other side of town to collect the perfect arrangement of flowers.

We had walked past bushes and trees of suitable flowers when we arrived at a perfect garden of roses.

It was a mid-morning weekday on a residential street with no cars in the driveway. The lights were off and it appeared that no one was home. There were so many roses, though we only picked a few as we were not greedy bouquet makers. As I was pulling the last pink rose from the bust I felt a liquid pelt in my side. I turned and saw a boy my age with a super soaker, 35 MPH water gun. He was joined by his younger brother who must have been on rose petal patrol because the two proceeded to spray us with machine gun water, chasing us down the block, trampling the few flowers we had acquired until we finally lost the two maniacs. I did not pick flowers for a long time after that.

Now that I am allowed to go out alone after dark, I embark with a scissors, sack and raincoat in tow, tip toeing down familiar blocks with the certainty that I probably won’t get caught.