In the back yard we had a vacant lot between us and our aunt Thora’s house. In the back of the lot were two old apple trees. As kids we lived in those trees. We would scrape together pieces of scrap wood from around the house that dad may or may not have been using and we built what we imagined was a tree house. In reality we just mailed pieces of wood to the tree trunk for steps so we could climb up into the branches easer. We put a few boards that were long enough to reach from limb to limb up so that we could sit up there without falling out. Mind you we moved from this home when I was seven so this tree house must have been quite amusing to our parents, having been built by a bunch of seven year old children.
This is where I learned to love green apples. From experance I learned how long to wait in order for the green apple to become nice and sour, and when they would have lost their bitterness. Even to this day give me a fresh green apple and a salt shaker and I will be in heaven.
Another use for the little green apples was to have apple wars. We would divide up into teams and have apple fights. We would use garbage can lids as our shields. We would sit with each team in our tree with our shields in place where we would plot for hours trying to come up with strategies the get a good shot at the rival team. One stratagy was that we would send a decoy off to one side of the tree on the ground hoping that our foes would expose themselves to us from an unexpected angle. It was really fun in the late fall when we would use the rotten apples from off of the ground. The challenge was to gather up the apples without getting hit by the other team who were waiting for us to expose ourselves.
It is amazing to me to remember the fun times. We were always playing one thing or another. We never watched TV. We would play for hours and never go in the house until lunch or dinner.