So today, Tree-Mendous Fruit Farms in Michigan held their annual Cherry Pit Spitting Championship. They have not yet posted the winner's name on their web site, so I'm just going to skip the congrats and jump right into some memories of my youth.
My parents planted several fruit trees and shrubs around our properties when we were younger. There were blueberry bushes, apple trees, a peach tree, an apricot tree (I think), a few wild plums lurking about and, yes, a cherry tree.
None of them, saving the blueberries (of course, the ones that were the biggest pain to pick!), did very well. The apple trees gave maybe 3 or 4 small apples a year. The peach tree always straggled, and we got maybe a peach off it a season. The apricot tree, I believe, died very young, and the cherry tree eventually fruited beautifully ... but the birds refused to let those fruits ripen before descending in droves to pick it clean.
So the year that my younger sister and I had our very own cherry pit spitting contest, I believe my mom bought the cherries at the grocery store. And in her motherly wisdom, she sent the whole bunch of them out on the deck for my sister and I to pit and get ready for a pie.
No, we did not eat all the cherries. We didn't even eat most of the cherries. We didn't even really have a pit-spitting contest. We did, however, have a cherry juice splashing contest. Who could get the pit out of the cherry making the most mess?
I'm sure you can see where this was going. Yes, we did eventually have pie, and yes, it was delicious, and yes, we made a big, big mess. We looked like we just strolled off the lot of the latest Chain Saw Massacre movie AFTER we had been dismembered with a chain saw. I suspect my mom probably relieved us of our cherries and sent us right back out to try to hose down the deck before it was permanently stained (I suspect, but don't remember ... apparently, it was such a challenge that I've blocked it from my memory).
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