Babalu Blog: Mangos and memories

July 02, 2008

Mangos and memories

It's been a bit tough, economically speaking, around the Prieto household lately. The Real Estate market is in the gutter and even high end residential, which is usually a resilient market, has slumped in sales. Gas prices are through the roof and thus not only are we paying more at the pump, but prices have gone up for everything that has to be manufactured, shipped, delivered, etc... Food is more expensive as well, with beef and poultry prices going up as corn feed has become more expensive since corn is now being used to make ethanol. I suppose everyone is feeling the pinch right now.

But I digress...

Speaking with my old man yesterday about this very subject, discussing how they're gonna make ends meet this month and how he basically couldnt count on me this month to pick up the economic slack, he stated something jokingly that took me to a different time and place.

"I wish we still had that mango tree in the backyard," he said. "I'd be doing what you used to do when you were a kid: setting a table in the corner and selling mangos at a buck a piece."

For a moment I pictured the old man sitting there on a folding chair barely holding his weight, with a bunch of mangos sitting atop their green, folding card table and a handwritten cardboard sign: "MANGOS: $1." I saw myself driving up to their house after a long day's work and actually seeing mom and dad hanging out in the shade of the black olive trees in the corner, peddling mangos.

Despite the obvious seriousness of the situation, I couldnt help but smile. It wasnt just me picturing mom and dad as the local mango outlet, but that, in reality, it was me that once served as the purveyor of mangos in the neighborhood and both mom and dad had actually driven home after working all day to find their son not doing homework or riding bike around the neighborhood or playing street football, but sitting at a table with a pile of mangos and dollar signs in his eyes.

Back when I was a kid, my parent's neighborhood was much much greener than it is today. You could literally ride bike all day and not spend more than a few minutes in the sun. Tree canopies hung over the streets like a soft, green, ceiling and you'd walk or ride bike below them and see this kaleidoscope on the ground and on your body where the sun had managed to peek through the leaves above. And there's nothing like the sound of leaves under bicycle tires to accompany that kaleidescope.

Over the years, though, hurricanes and canker scares and concrete driveways and master bedroom additions have really done a number on the landscape in my parents neighborhood.

But when I was a kid every yard had at least two huge fruit trees: mangos and avocados, mango and oranges, mangos and grapefruit, mangos and starfruit, mangos and key limes, mangos and sapotes. And my best friend back then, Frankie, and I used to take full advantage of the plentiful bounty.

Frankie had avocado and mango and when none of his 5 brothers and sister usurped the inventory on his trees, we were sure to have plenty of stock. The avocadoes were delicious. Big, heavy ones that pulled tree limbs down. The mangos, though, werent the big mama jamas. They were the really small, sweet ones that ripened all red and beautiful.

The mangos at my house, though, weren't your average every day little mangos. We had this tree that produced mangos the size of footballs. They never turned passed a greenish yellow when ripe, but when you cut those suckers open, pure orange mango gold. I havent tasted a mango like those since.

So Frankie and I would pool or mango and avocado resources and set up shop under the black olive trees at the corner of my house. Business wasnt always good, obviously, because most of our local "customers" had their own backyard mango production facilities. But we did OK. Sometimes we'd even run out of our mango stock and had to look for other mango sources.

On those occassions when we were lucky enough to sell all of our mangos we did either of two things: swiped somebody else's mangos from their yards ,or we'd go door to door mowing lawns. The price of a neatly mowed lawn? Five bucks and all the mangos we could carry. We mowed a lot of lawns and carried a lot mangos back in those days.

Driving home yesterday, after having hung up with the old man and making my way through traffic with mango memories in my head, I realized that you never see kids mowing lawns for a few bucks nowadays. You dont see that many fruit trees anymore and you hardly see any lemonade stands. My city isnt as green as I remember it to be when I was growing up and mangos arent as plentiful. And they sure dont taste as sweet.

And Im sitting there behind the wheel feeling all nostalgic and wistful, feeling a little down because the old man is having trouble making ends meet and I cant help him right now because Ive got two bucks to my name and missing the old halcyon mango days of summers. Days without without responsibilities or worries, days of mango stained tshirts when life gives me a little gem. A little mango gem.

Right there at the four way stop three blocks from my home, at the corner, under the umbrella of a flowering flamboyam, is a small folding card table with a cardboard sign and a pile of red and orange and yellow colored mangos.

There's a kid sitting there with his elbows on the table and a long face in his cupped hands. The handwritten sign next to him reads "MANGOS: ~~$2.00~~ $1.00."

I pull over to the side of the road, get out of the truck and walk over to the kid who's already standing in mango selling anticipation.

"Pick me out a nice one, " I say. The kid goes through all the mangos on the table and picks one out then pauses, looks at the mango in his hand and places it back on the table. "Hang on," he says to me as he reaches below the table.

Of course, I know exactly what he's doing because Im seeing me right there in front of me.

He pulls out a big, red and orange, unbruised beauty from his special super secret mango stash and hands it to me. I smile and let out a short chuckle, pull my wallet out and hand him my last two bucks. He takes the two bucks, looks at his slashed, sale price sign and then back at me as if there's been some kind of confusion and tries to hand me back one of my dollars.

"Keep it," I say. "One buck for the mango and one buck for the memories."

Both were sweet, and delicious.

Posted by Val Prieto at July 2, 2008 10:41 AM

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Beautiful, Val. I miss the huge mango tree next door to me that was the most biggest bird sanctuary in my neighborhood. (And I miss my avocado tree, felled by Andrew before its time.)

Posted by: George L. Moneo at July 2, 2008 11:31 AM

Shiiiiit man. Who gives you the right to make me cry in the office?

Posted by: Henry Louis Gomez at July 2, 2008 11:43 AM

So sweet, Val. You should get all your beautiful memories together and assemble them into book form.

Posted by: Claudia4Libertad at July 2, 2008 12:02 PM

What a gift you have Val. I can picture you and your friends selling mangos under the olive tree, and your street in its younger days covered with a canopy of trees. I can taste the mango.

I was in a foul mood before reading this, now I've got a smile on my tear stained face. My co-workers no longer ask me why I'm crying, they know.

Posted by: Ziva Sahl at July 2, 2008 12:06 PM

Dammit.

Do you know how hard it is to breathe through an already stuffy nose??

Posted by: AmandaD at July 2, 2008 12:39 PM

I have a mango tree in my backyard. Last year, when we moved in, we would let the mangoes fall as they ripened and pick them off the ground if they hadn't split. This year the neighborhood squirrels have figured out that there's this sucker with a bunch of half ripened mangoes hanging from his tree. They're cutting the fruit free and eating them off the ground. What's a good rule of thumb on when a green mango is ready to be harvested?

Posted by: TomSawyer at July 2, 2008 01:07 PM

Tom Sawyer,

You can pick half ripened mangos and help them ripen without being on the tree by placing them in brown paper bags. no need for refrigeration, just a day or two - more, depending on how "ripened they are when you pick them - in the bag and they do quite well. Obviously, nothing is better than picking them off the tree when ripe.

As for the squirrels, a couple of days standing guard over the tree with a nice, strong and powerful water hose gives them a pretty good message. I wont even mention a BB gun so as not to offend animal lovers.

Posted by: Val Prieto at July 2, 2008 01:37 PM

I'm covered from head to toe with goosebumps!! Thank you for another heartwarming story.

Posted by: Qbanspice at July 2, 2008 02:10 PM

When we arrived from Cuba back in 1961 my parents rented a house in Miami Shores (NE 3rd Ave. and 105 Street) with two big avocado trees and no mango trees. Most of our neighbors (mostly Jewish, Italian-American and some Anglos) however, had mango trees in their backyard. These mangoes were always left to rot on the ground so one Saturday my younger brother decided to jump the neighbor’s fence and grab some before the squirrels got to them. We were having quite a feast when we were spotted by our neighbor who had started running towards us screaming “veleno, veleno” or something similar. We caught on very quickly -since the word veleno sounded very much like the Spanish for veneno (poison) - and thought that perhaps she had poisoned the mangoes to kill the squirrels. We ran back inside the house screaming that the crazy lady next door had poisoned the mangoes that had “somehow gotten into our yard” and that we had eaten. Well, you can just imagine three kids, ages 10, 9, and 8 all screaming at the same time.

Fearing the worst my poor mother grabbed the three of us and ran over to the house on the corner where a retired physician lived. When he opened the door the four of us started speaking Spanish all at once. Somehow we got the message across (I guess he saw the telltale sign of mango stain all over our faces and clothes) because he immediately realized what we had eaten and started to laugh. After speaking to our next door neighbor he explained, half in Italian and half in English, that our neighbor had not poisoned the mangoes. We later found out that our neighbors never ate mangoes because it made them sick (go figure!). Needless to say, when word got around the neighborhood that “the Cuban kids didn’t get sick eating mangoes” we would get bags full of them from all our neighbors. Let me tell you, we had mango milkshake, mango ice cream, dulce de mango, and just plain old mango until my mother thought we would turn yellow. So selling mangoes in our neighborhood was out of the question, but we did sell avocadoes

Posted by: Firefly at July 3, 2008 12:36 AM

Val, Thanks...made my day.

Posted by: rrrod at July 5, 2008 08:07 AM

July 02, 2008

Mangos and memories

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