The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1884-09-03
A MEMORY OF WILD FRUIT.

The season of the ripening OF grapes has
come, and arbors and trellises and porches
are dotted thickly with purple and amber
and black, where the clusters glow through
the fast whitening leaves. The beat vines of
the Garonne or the Cote dor weld no more
grateful or healthful fruit than our Gaia bias
or Concords or Delawares, but no bald
headed boy who forty years or more ago
fshed on the big drift" or hunted
pawpaws down either bank of the
river to the mouth of Pleasant
Run, can be made to believe that any of your
modern grapes, your fancy varieties, your
daintily named products, can approach the
appetizing fragrance of a hatful of "ceon
grapes" just after the first frost has struck
them. There are none now. AT least the
SentinePs od-ranger has seen none in many
a long ramble down the river bottom aud
along the banks of the tributary creeks.
Once in a while he has founda vine, as lonely
as the Ancient Mariner" with something
OF the same weird fascination for the mem
DRY of 'long ago." but as barren as the con-
demned fig tree, and as full OF melancholy
suggestions as tombstone. Where
be now your clinging tendrils,
your plated vines, that boys could
climb as readily as a squirrel; your black
punches that were won't to set the robins in a
twitter? All gone with the red berried GIN
seng, the luscious black-haw, the wild-plum,.
the purple mulberry, sweetest of all the.
grove. The tender taste of fruit that Isl
gone shall never come back to those that
would have taken licking twice day fot
the chance Of playing hockey to get it, The
coon grape was never a big grape, though it
sometimes got up to the size OF an Isabella,
and it had no pulp. Like the Herbemont
it was juice ard soft seeds inside
the skin, aud that was thin as
the skin of a new candidate, and the flavor
was no insipid sweetness. 1t had an acid
tinge that made it piquant. and peculiar
smack" or "gout or suggestion Of aromatic
intensity that made 1t as different from the
average grape OF to days market as a frolic
some "tom.b boy" from parlor doll. 1t made
better preserves by all odds than the best Of
cultured grapes and for pies-language as
far as it has advanced this side of the Allie
ghanies is incompetent to describe its su-
periority. Who would think of making
pie of Concords or Isabellas, aud who would
not hurry with eager hands to gather the
saucy, piquant sharply sweet wild grape
for the pies of Queens banquet? The
old time hunter and fisher along the
depths OF the neighboring bottoms has
often found the coon grape blackening nat
ursl arbor of eims in a thicket of iron weeds,
with pawpaws paving the grass within arms
length, and ginseng crushed under every
footfall-and the Garden OF Eden had moth
ing that a school-boy of that day, or any day,
would take more delight in. The only cul-
tured grape of that remote period that the
Sentiners idler recalls was the fox grape,
thick-skinned thing, with pulp as tough as
lump of India rubber, and not greatly more
relishGble. Being carefully protected, how
ever, it was an irresistible provocation to the
school-boy and the street Arab, such as he
was forty five years ago. And there was now
and then a sporadic growth of him sprouted
from some of the main stalks of
the "chain gang" DR.. Isaac Coe
had fox grape vine growing
in his garden, where the late Bishop Tai.
bott's residence is, on Circle street, and it
was raided from the alley in the rear Of the
old primitive Presbyterian Church whenever
the Sunday -school scholars saw a chance in
the Doctors absence IN the school, OF
course the grapes were especially esteemed,
though they were not half as good as the big
blue wild grape that lined the trees on the
west bank of the river, about where the
''abbstoir" is. That bottom" on both
sides OF the river was a marvel of wild fruit
productiveness. There is nothing like it
now in the county, probably nothing equal
to it in the State, or any State of the North