In which the cousins of apples encounter the cousins of me.
First they’re hanging from a tree, ruby red and tantalizing. For about a week. Then, they’re squishing beneath your feet and getting stuck to the bottom of your shoes, causing you to slip around on flat concrete like you’re an unwitting participant in a Benny Hill sketch. I am of course speaking of crabapples.
Florida has oranges. Georgia has peaches. And the Black Hills of South Dakota has these surprisingly awful tasting mini-apples that only birds and deer love. A sure sign that autumn is upon us, there are a surplus of crabapples sprouting up around my Rapid City neighborhood, thanks, most likely to the endlessly rainy summer we’ve had thus far. They make for colorful photos and break up the monotony of the customary yellow tones of the late summer.
A quick google search reveals that there are many crabapple recipes out there. The main ingredients seem to be sugar, sugar, crabapples and then sugar.
From deep in the vault of my mind a memory floats to surface upon my consciousness. A memory of the Great Crabapple Caper of 1987.
I have two cousins, one that is my same age (around 8 at the time) and another that’s around five years older (most likely about 13 at the time). I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, so for the purposes of this story, I will graciously change their names to protect them. The younger, one of my closest friends then and unto this very day, I will call “Tad.” The older one, I think I will call…just grabbing a name at random here: “Chod.” Chod had a friend his age at the time whose name was Matt. I don’t know where that guy is and he ain’t family, so it’s up to him to protect his own self.
It began as a sleepover at my cousins’ house in Deadwood, summer 1987. We were to sleep in their camper parked just outside their front door. At some point after dark, when the thrill of being allowed the unsupervised sanctuary of the camper wore off, Chod and Matt began scheming to steal apples from the tree in the yard of an elderly couple across the street.
This old couple were the grandparents of a kid both our age and Chod’s, one of whom was then and later a very good friend of mine. For some reason, we didn’t dare ask permission to take the crabapples, such is the twisted logic of young minds.
Obsessed as we were at the time with action films, which we called “Arnold Schwarzenegger movies” the older boys concocted an overly elaborate plan. The bulk of the risk, naturally, was thrust upon the two younger boys, Tad and I. Flashlights were gathered, backpacks were shouldered. Binoculars were probably requisitioned then tossed aside when it was discovered they don’t work at all in the dark.
Chod and Matt took strategic positions as lookouts while Tad and I crept through the shadows into the yard across the street, which was a grand total of about 20 yards away. A back porch light cast an eerie, gloomy glow upon half of the tree. The other half loomed solitary and skeletal in the darkened yard, where Tad and I lay in waiting.
When the moment seemed opportune, we darted under the tree but quickly realized that the branches were too high for our third-grade arms to reach, so we began frantically snatching fallen, half-rotted crabapples from the ground, stuffing them into the backpack. I have a vague recollection of being caught redhanded in the act and then running away, a voice shouting after us in bemused indifference. As I looked over my shoulder I caught only the silhouette of a backlit figure standing at the back porch, hands on hips, face obscured by the glow of the porch light.
The details of the aftermath are now irretrievable but I do remember that we took a bite or two out of several of the crabapples, which were well past their due date, and then pretty much just forgot about the rest of our loot. We returned to the camper and settled down until the two bored, older boys teased and bullied us back into the safety of the house, where a still brand new Nintendo Entertainment System waited to console us.
As for the taste. I will let Tad himself tell you what he thought of that:
What's Good, Black Hills? 
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