family memories

I am reposting this story on immigrants and our country. It was originally written in August of 2016, but it’s even more relevant now in 2025 as we hear news of immigrants being detained and even flown illegally to Salvadorean slave prisons. Stories of tourists from other countries being detained for no reason. Stories of children here for medical treatment being sent back. Lord have mercy…

As I was making tabouleh (or tabouli) today for dinner, chopping cucumbers, tomatoes, a green pepper, green onions, parsley, and mint, my mind wandered back to the first time I was introduced to this delicious salad. I was about ten years old; it was a summer family picnic and Aunt Ethel had brought some stuff in a bowl that didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. Mom asked me to carry it in and put it on the table. I whispered to her, “Do I have to try this?” She smiled and shook her head. Much to my embarrassment, Aunt Ethel heard. Or maybe she just knew it wasn’t typical fare in our family. She smiled and said, “It’s your Uncle Abe’s favorite dish. He’d be glad to have it all for himself.”

A few months ago, I wrote a post with this photo in it. I labeled it Old Folks at the Cottage. My grandmother Carrie is on the left. See her sister on the far right next to her little boy? Her name is Ethel and sometime in the 1920s she married her own Syrian refugee, my Uncle Abe.

A large man with a white crewcut and wire-rimmed glasses, I remember him always wearing a suit — even to summer family picnics. He had a soft voice and a melodic accent, and he would stand in our living room and hold out his arms. We kids would race toward him and he would catch us and throw us up in the air. His deep-throated he-he-he would make us laugh even more. As a kid, I didn’t think much about his history, but I’d heard the stories: his parents sent him over on a boat around 1904 as a ten-year-old with ten cents in his pocket and instructions to find a relative in New York City.

As a grown up, I looked back on that and wondered what could have been happening in Syria to make parents put their ten-year-old son on a boat and send him off to another world, probably to never see him again…

So I looked it up. In 1904, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling fast. The Turks were conscripting young Syrian Christian boys for the army. And Armenian and Greek Christians were being killed at an alarming rate. Wikipedia even uses the word Genocide.

Abe eventually made his way to Southwestern Pennsylvania, where he found work in a mine. There he met my Uncle Leslie, who introduced him to his pretty, shy sister, Ethel. Not all the family was happy. Marrying an immigrant wasn’t common practice in the hills of Greene County. Though there were plenty of immigrants working in the coal mines, they were mostly Italian and Slovak. Certainly not Arabs…even Christian Arabs. (Leslie eventually married his own immigrant wife, Mary — whose naturalization papers from Italy I have — and who was one of the women who lived here at the cottage.)

I’ve finished making the Tabouleh for tonight’s dinner. (Recipe follows.) But I’m not finished thinking about how much our American culture has been shaped by immigrants. In fact, according to the U.S. Census of 2010, 2.9 million Americans identify themselves as solely Native American. The population of this country is approximately 320 million. That makes about 317 million of us who are descended from immigrants. We are a country of those who left. Has it been so long ago that we have forgotten?

Think on this: What would it take for you to leave your place, on foot, with your family, with no clear idea of where you are going or if you will be safe. It would have to be pretty bad, eh? Who are we, as a nation, that we cannot bring these immigrants/refugees to this country, feed them, clothe them, give them shelter, dignity, and a life free from constant war or poverty?

After the VietNam War, the U.S. took in 2 million Vietnamese refugees. When it became evident that there were thousands of “boat people” being rejected by other countries…

…President Jimmy Carter responded by ordering the 7th Fleet to seek out vessels in distress in the South China Sea. His Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, told Congress in July 1979 that: We are a nation of refugees. Most of us can trace our presence here to the turmoil or oppression of another time and another place. Our nation has been immeasurably enriched by this continuing process. We will not turn our backs on our traditions. We must meet the commitments we have made to other nations and to those who are suffering. In doing so, we will also be renewing our commitments to our ideals.

Look back at your family tree. My grandma Carrie was a card-carrying member of the DAR (I don’t admit that too often) yet still, I’ve had plenty of immigrants in my extended family. Welsh miners, Mennonite preachers, Syrian boys, Italian girls, Irish farmers, Czech steel workers, French Huguenots, Spanish son-in-laws… Even the English and Scottish ancestors came from, well, England and Scotland — there’s not a Native American in our branches, that I can find.

I am praying things will change; hoping talks of walls and closed borders and the unjust actions of ICE will go the way of the dinosaur; hoping that we remember those ideals. A verse from the Bible keeps going around in my brain. Jesus wept.

And today, in 2025, I’m adding another verse from the Bible: This one is from Matthew 25:40 and Jesus said it. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Here’s the delicious recipe for Tabouleh. While you are chopping vegetables for it, think of the wonderful mixture it is. And how it is better with more variety. Colorful and tangy, every bite is different.

Tabouli (serves 6-8)

1 cup bulgur wheat, couscous, or quinoa, cooked (Bulgur is traditional.)
1 t. salt
1/4 c. lemon juice
1/4 c. olive oil
1-2 cloves crushed garlic
Cook the grains as directed. While warm mix in the next 4 ingredients (through garlic) and refrigerate for a couple of hours.

1/2 c. chopped scallions
1/2 c. chopped mint
1/2 c. chopped parsley
When the grains and dressing are cool add the above herbs. You can vary the amounts, depending on what you have on hand and how much you like them. Some tabouli is very green and herb-rich. Other tabouli has less.

The following ingredients are optional according to what you have in the fridge, or how you like it:
1/2 c. cooked garbanzo beans
1/2 c. shredded carrots
2 medium tomatoes, diced
1 c. chopped cucumbers or summer squash
1 diced green pepper

I think the more vegetables added, the better. But it’s delicious with just tomatoes and cucumbers..

You can garnish tabouli with kalamata olives and feta cheese, but it isn’t necessary.

*Salmagundi –In English culture the term does not refer to a single recipe, but describes the grand presentation of a large plated salad comprising many disparate ingredients. These can be arranged in layers or geometrical designs on a plate or mixed. The ingredients are then drizzled with a dressing. The dish aims to produce wide range of flavours and colours and textures on a single plate. (From Wikipedia)

This is a Remember when we were kids? post. If my memory is faulty, and I’ve gotten anything wrong, there aren’t many people around any more to tell me so… Just a couple of sisters, who have good memories of those times too.

*Apple Hill Cottage, our apple trees, and our lives now are right next to the old orchard.*

We three sisters grew up about three miles from my grandfather Pa’s apple orchard. (Pa called us Cee, Dee, and Fancy.) He used to drive his old farm truck up our driveway and ask Any of you girls want to go for a ride? Sometimes there were two of us, sometimes three, but those were the days when we just hopped in the back of the pickup. Most of the time he would make us sit down underneath the window (while we were on the road) but when we got to the orchard, we were allowed to sit on the sides of the truck, holding on for dear life over the bumpy orchard paths, and laughing as the wind blew our hair. No one can ride in the back of a pickup truck without smiling…

The big barn was magical to us, even though we weren’t allowed to climb the ladders to the hay loft. There, right in the middle of the main floor, was the huge apple grading machine. With a flip of the switch the machine turned on, bushels of apples were poured in, and the apples rode along a wire mesh train; if the apple was too small, it fell through the mesh to the bin of small apples. I remember the sorter as having three stations, with the last station as the final place for the large, Grade A apples. After searching the internet, I found this photo of a similar machine from Long’s Family Orchard in Michigan.

It was a grown up job to be allowed to stand at one of the stations and pick out any bruised or stained apples, and change to an empty basket when one was full. And the fate of those small, maybe bruised apples? The Cider Mill.

We all remember riding to the cider mill in the back of the pick up truck. I guess Pa figured with all the apples in the back of the truck, we were caged in and couldn’t fall out. We don’t, however, remember where it was. I think it couldn’t have been too far away.

I remember it as being an old, falling down building that was pretty much in disrepair. But we ran through the pressing area to the smaller room on the side where the spigots were. And also the bees. Hundreds of bees. (As I look back now, after my adult experience with cider pressing, I’m sure they were yellow jackets.) It was our job to take the glass jugs and switch them out when they were full. Oh the smell…

Here is where my memory fails…I don’t remember putting the filled jugs in boxes or crates. But surely we didn’t just put glass jugs in the back of the truck? I don’t know, but somehow we got back to our destination, which was the little barn at the orchard. This is the barn that has graced many of my own photos here at Apple Hill. In the back, on the ground floor was a refrigerated area for the cider.

We also sold cider on Sunday afternoons at the bottom of the long driveway to the house where we grew up. We stored the sign and the bleachers and the apples in the little garage there, right on Rte.19. Pa’s brother-in-law, Uncle Jim, had painted the signs–just the word APPLES and a pointing hand painted above a bushel of apples. It was in the days before interstates, and Rte. 19 was the main road from Erie to Florida. While Pa was putting together the small stand—three rows of bleachers—we would put out the signs, the apples, and the cider. Bushels went on the bottom shelf, peck baskets went on the middle shelf, and the shining glass jugs of cider on the top. 75 cents a gallon. And still, people would ask for a taste before they plunked down their 75 cents.

There were metal chairs in the front yard that we sat in while waiting for our customers. We counted cars, kept a list of license plates, ate apples, and sold apples and cider. Those were the days that the apples were sold right in the baskets. You bought a bushel of apples, and you got the basket too. I checked online last week–bushel baskets currently go for $9.49 each… I found a lower price of $7, but they were out of stock. And the cider was in glass gallon jugs. You can buy a case of 4 glass gallon cider jugs these days for $24.

And of course, we have stories…

We always replenished the cider on the top row with gallons that were stored in the refrigerator of the little house kitchen. (It was the house where our grandparents stayed often on weekends during fruit season, so they could be near the orchards.) All of us girls had gone in to the refrigerator in the kitchen to grab a gallon or two of new cider throughout the afternoon. As dinnertime approached, Nanny came out into the yard and whispered to us, “Girls, do you see my gallon of iced tea up on that rack where the cider is?”

It wasn’t there. Her iced tea was famous for being too weak, too sweet, and awful. No one liked it but my grandfather, and she had made it in a glass gallon jug and put it in the refrigerator. And one of us had sold her terrible iced tea to a customer. No one ever came back to complain, so we decided it must have been an out-of-town customer. Secretly I hoped it had been sold to the black Studebaker sedan from Ohio with the kid in the back seat who had stuck his tongue out at me.

Last week I checked out two books from the library in an effort to combat the diseases our apple trees are prone to have. One sentence struck me: If you want to start planting new apple trees, don’t plant them near an old orchard.

I guess that may be true; the old trees will give the new trees their diseases and their insects. Plus we probably have 75 generations of deer who’ve lived here and grown fat on the apples from those 19 acres that are now whittled down to 3. I wish Pa was still around to give us advice. But I certainly have him to thank for all these memories…