Old Southern Apples (review)

For those looking for a lesson in how to make corporate America more responsible, the book is a must read. For those angry about the state of the environment, for those looking for examples of the human will triumphing over big business, Troubled Waters is one book that should be read. Calhoun, Creighton Lee, Jr. Old Southern Apples. Blacksburg Virginia: The McDonald and Woodward Publishing Co., 1995. 326 pages. $49.95 To an outsider, a whole book on Southern apples, their uses, varieties, and care may seem like a very ridiculous idea. But that, of course, is the opinion of an outsider. Those of us who grew up in the South know that apples were and remain in many homes, at least, an important part of our diet. As the author of Old Southern Apples relates, many farm families in the earlier part of this century never went a day without consuming apples in one form or another. Maybe it was apple butter on hot biscuits, fried apples with sausage and eggs, fried apple pies, or cider, both sweet and hard. And their palates and ours could hardly forget that slice of hot apple pie made from dried apples. The point, indeed, is simple: Apples are an integral part of the life of the Southerner , and they have been for over two centuries. While the bulk of this book is concerned with cataloguing nearly sixteen hundred varieties of apples grown in the South, either now or in years past, Calhoun, with obvious enthusiasm, deftly introduces his readers to the wonders of apples. Calhoun also explains with reasonable clarity the practice of cultivating apples and the process of orchard preparation, the prevention of disease, the control ofinsects, and the elevated art of grafting. He notes, for instance, that when different varieties of apple trees were planted in close proximity to each other, what resulted was a cross-pollinated seedling that borrowed from both parent trees, a fact which accounts for the large number of different varieties of apple trees in the South. With apples on hand, of course, the farm families had to do something to preserve them for winter use. One favorite method was to stash them away in an unheated room in the house where the colder temperatures would retard spoilage. Others stored apples in root cellars along with potatoes and other vegetables, while still others dug pits, lined them with straw or corn stalks, and covered them with straw or dirt. Some, too, were stowed away in barrels and on the ground in tobacco barns. 66 Another favorite technique for preservation was to dry them. After the apples were peeled and cut into long, thin slices, they were left to dry in the summer sun under cheese-cloths. So valuable were these dried apple delicacies that they were used as a medium of exchange with local merchants, who often collected enough to ship large quantities to places outside the South where they were enthusiastically received. In 1872 alone, $300,000 to $400,000 worth of dried apples was shipped from High Point, North Carolina. Among the favorite ways ofpreserving the goodness of apples was to make apple butter, a favorite spread of Southerners, but not really very well-known outside the South. Yet the coarse consistency of apple butter and the rich aroma of it melting inside a hot biscuit make it one of the most popular ways to consume apples in the South. The juice of apples provided a number of important products. The most obvious was sweet cider, the juice of pressed apples from a variety of different trees, some sweet, some tart, some just in-between. Cider was and continues to be a favorite of travelers stopping at Southern roadside stands. But unless that juice is pasteurized, it quickly turns to hard cider, a slightly alcoholic drink with just enough kick to it to soothe the nerves and relax the muscles, a nice bedtime beverage to help even the most fidgety slip soundly into deep sleep. Up until the early part of the nineteenth century hard cider was even a favorite drink at baptisms and revivals. Take the cider a little farther and you've...