The first glimpse of apple trees when driving in the looooooong line of cars.
Dixon’s apples are a New Mexico tradition. The lines are astoundingly long. It’s amazing the sheer quantity of people that find their way along this road that peters out from highway, to two-lane, to dirt road. It’s oddly reminiscent of a scene from an apocalypse movie, with the long line of unmoving cars, no end in sight. Some pull over to the side to tend to some emergency of the moment. Some abandon their rides and set out on foot, not realizing the distance, or hoping their partners, who stay with the vehicle, will make it the destination in time to pick them up. Some are towing flatbeds trailers, hopes high. Occasionally, a car wends its way back up the road, the occupants inevitably chewing on apples and mouthing astonishment at the long line waiting to get in. And the line inches forward a carlength in response.
Hours later, when you reach the gatekeeper and wait for cars to pull out to make room for you, they quiz you on how many bags you will want. More bags, or the less-robust appearing are herded to the closer parking, the rest are sent off to the more distant lots. These bags, you understand, are 22 lbs. More than enough apples – a quarter of that amount seems like plenty for a snack here and there for an entire family. But people buy several. They take orders from their friends, relatives and coworkers.
Once you find your little space in the parking lot, you take out your wheelbarrow, leave your vehicle, and join another line. People eye your wheelbarrow enviously and ask you where you got it, and you explain, over and over, that you brought it from home. You become very well acquainted with the people in front and behind you in line, as you stand there, waiting, slowing creeping toward the sale barn. A young mother catches a toad to amuse her child, a pair of older women describe all the things they make from the apples. There is a flurry of pointing at the news helicopter as it comes in for a landing, and half joking threats that even they aren’t allowed to cut into line.
Once the line makes it to the sale barn, it’s more of a polite stampede, all alliances thrown aside as bags of champagne apples and jugs of cider are gathered into the wheelbarrows and trundled to the checkout. You feel oddly freed as you roll out of there, liberated from the lines and waiting. All you require is enough patience to fend off the would be wheelbarrow inheritors and avoid running over the desperate people trudging down the dirt road next to the long line of cars waiting to get in.
But, I did this. I acquired the apples, I distributed them to those that requested them. I broke into my own bag for snacking until I emitted appley burps. I then washed, cut up, boiled, drained, filtered, added sugar to and boiled up and jarred a healthy chunk of them. Pounds and pounds of apples and it hardly dented the bag.
And, for all this, I ended up with 3 3/4 jars of apple mint jelly?!
