Sarah Z. Creates

I remember muscadines: the leathery toughness of their skin, the green gelatin that was so sweet and had to be sucked away from that central cluster of seeds. Climbing through the brambles along the side of the dirt road, rutted and pitted by traffic, getting scratched and bitten as we wormed closer to those muscadine vines that hung in the dappled shade.

The adventures of summer up and down that red dirt road. Except that dirt wasn’t really red. It was more orange than red, and more clay than dirt.

It was hard-scrabble earth, and we were lucky we didn’t depend on it. That road cut through soybean fields we played in, then carved through trees and creek beds we tracked and explored. It was summer, and it was hot and, like all children without access to cable TV, we were bored.

So we traveled the road. On foot and on bikes. Up one way and down the other, picking up speed until your hands ached from the handlebars jolting over the ruts on the unpaved part of the road.