Several weeks ago, on a weekday, midweek, in the late afternoon, while heading to the cheese section to look for Huntsman, my favorite for snacking with spicy salami or pepperoni and green grapes, I paused at the green grape section for a quick look (wink).
There, between the clamshelled, overpriced grapes promising nothing more than a fancy name that proclaimed a marketer’s pride, sat plastic bags labeled “Thompson seedless grapes,” the grapes of my youth, the ones that pulled me away from plums but not from watermelons, toward a set of pleasures that still haunt me.
When green grapes were seasonal, not year-round as they are today, long before Chile became the winter supplier of grapes in the 1980s, Thompson seedless grapes were an event. By then I was middle-aged and able to solve almost any grape crisis with something crispy and sweet whenever I wanted. But these were Thompson.
My eyes misted. My heart quickened. I could see the turn in the road from trips to the beach, where we stopped at a roadside market. I always got green grapes. My sister and brother got plums.
My mind, always on the brink of creative crisis, stirred with possibilities. I still had several pounds of grapes in the refrigerator. I usually bought grapes on the weekend for the Monday Green Grape Report. There was a pattern, a flow, a process: Buy on the weekend, write on Sunday, publish on Monday.
I studied the Thompson grapes, lifting several bags to check shape, texture, and weight; shaking them to see if the grapes fell from the stems; checking for uniformity of size and color; and checking density of desire against the flow of purpose. Then I made my mistake.
I left the store with Huntsman cheese but without the grapes, the required fruit for my snack tray. I’d told myself it was good to see them again. When I came back on the weekend, I’d definitely buy some.
They would make a great subject for a Green Grape Report, where I could explain my fascination with them and how they always stood broad-shouldered at the doorway to my palate, always satisfying, always a pleasure, always setting my mind at ease by refreshing memories and cleansing my palate of processed foods.
That night, as I relaxed in my chair reading a poetry book about remembrances, regret appeared about halfway through the second glass of wine, merlot, not chablis. It was accompanied by anger that two glasses of wine kept me from quickly driving back to the grocery store to buy the grapes.
Instead, I would have to wait until the next day to correct my error. I had thought too much about the process of producing the Green Grape Report and too little about the surprise appearance of one of my earliest culinary crushes. I had left them on the shelf.
The next morning, after coffee and a three-cheese-and-ham omelet served with home fries on a Blue Plate Special Kitchen plate, I returned to the grocery store to buy two bags of Thompson, one for the house and the other for my snacking pleasure as I drove around Westerville for the day.
I stood at the cooler, freshly stocked with green grapes. None of them were Thompson.
Their names bore the titles assigned to them by marketing departments, not Thompson, named for the man who discovered their uniqueness and, at least in my mind, made them the best grape ever.
Somewhere in the ether, in a security-camera video storage facility, is footage of a grown man standing in front of a grocery-store cooler, slump-shouldered, arms hanging limp at his sides, realizing that the moment had passed him by. Passed him by, with his permission and insistence.
I’ve not seen another Thompson seedless grape in that grocery store, or anywhere else in Westerville, since that afternoon. That one opportunity to join memory with desire, to return, however briefly, to the roadside market, the trip to the beach, my sister and brother with their plums, and a time when pleasure could be contained in a plastic bag of green grapes.
Now, each week, I continue searching in the Green Grape Report, tasting other grapes, studying other grapes, writing about other grapes, hoping that one day I’ll see Thompson again and find that small opening back into my youth.
But there’s something I haven’t mentioned. I didn’t just fail to buy the Thompson grapes that day. I didn’t take a sample. No test.
I can hear Rod Serling:
“For Gary, the doorway appeared without warning in the produce section of a grocery store. No flashing lights. No clocks running backward. Only a plastic bag of green grapes bearing a familiar name.
“He could have reached inside. Instead, he decided there would be another day. A reasonable decision, certainly.
“Except that some doors open only once. And sometimes the distance between childhood and the present can be measured by something as small as a grape, left untouched, on a shelf in the Twilight Zone.”
The Green Grape Report
Food Review by Gary Gardiner
Brand: Air Chief
Price: $1.29 a pound at Aldi.
Appearance: Bright color with few flaws. Grapes tight on the stems. Few loose grapes at the bottom of the bag.
Size: Size of a cherry tomato. Uniformly shaped.
Crispiness: Solid with firm skin.
Taste: Sweetness continuesfrom California.
PLU Code: 4498
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