Chapter 65, Mount Blank

Those canyons and dessert scenes brought back memories of me and Yossi Sha’abi climbing the cliffs over the beach in Netanya. We even fell down 30 feet once. A while before, we saw a movie about some mountain climbers climbing the Himalayas or was it the Alpines, I don’t remember. It influenced me and inspired me to start climb hills and cliffs. Yossi and I put on our sneakers and found some ropes and started exploring Netanya’s cliffs over the beach together.

Now that we got back to Shfeya from our GAD’NA trip, I collected the rope I used to scare Leah. As soon as school session was over, I dropped my books on my bed and walked to the fence around the village. I packed a water canteen and went to search for walls to climb.

A little east of our school there was a lime quarry. The whole eastern side of the hill was carved down, forming a tall white wall. “Mount Blank” I called it, a perfect wall for climbing. I had to leave the school grounds through tear in the fence to get closer. I found a strong tree right above the quarry. I tighten one end of the rope around the tree and dropped the other end over the edge. I had two hours before dinner, so, I ran down the side of the hill to the bottom of the wall and looked for the rope. I found it hanging about twenty feet above me. I grabbed some dirt from under me scrubbed my hands with it and jumped toward the first bump on the wall. Being so skinny I was able to pull myself up easily. The wall had many bumps, but they were sharp so in no time I was full of scratches. It was a welcome relief to reach the rope. I managed to tie the rope around my stomach the way Dad taught me when he was training to be a medic. Now I didn’t have to be so close to the wall and I pulled myself up faster.

“Hey! Yes you, up there!” I heard an angry voice from below. “You are trespassing a private property!”

I didn’t even look back, I pulled myself up quickly, pulled the rope and ran back to my room. At the dining room, Magi the head counselor stood up and announced that tomorrow morning we will be skipping our regular classes and joining the orange grove crew for an emergency picking. Rain or shine, we must be at the center parking lot to board the truck.

“Before we start serving food,” he continued, “It came to my attention that some kids were trespassing to the quarry. I must stress, this is a dangerous place to be. No one should go there under no circumstances.” Of course, I didn’t say anything to anyone.

“Finally!” I said to myself, as we lined up to go on the truck. It is the second semester that I am not working on an agricultural task. After working in the kitchen, they moved me to housekeeping, not just housekeeping, I had to work for nasty Leah the house mother. 

We had to cramp in back of the truck, sitting one next to each other on the long benches, yet there were still kids on the parking lot. Our driver drove 6 feet forward and stopped abruptly. All of us slid forward squished onto each other. Suddenly we had room for the rest of the kids. As soon as we drove off it started raining. It was getting colder, and we were hoping it would stop by the time we get to the grove. There were no picking oranges in the rain.

“Here you have a clipper, one for each one of you,” said the overseer. “Each one of you, pick a ladder and push it next to the tree. We have short ladders and tall ones depending on the size of the tree.”

“Can we eat the Oranges?” Asked Naftali.

“Oh, that, yes, you may eat as many oranges as you like, but you may not bring them back to your room”.

The rain has stopped but it was cold, very cold. I picked a middle size ladder and approached the first tree I saw. Besides the clipper and the ladder, we received a side bag to collect oranges. It had a fold on the bottom with a clip to open the bag and dump the oranges in the big container. The container was six by six by three-foot height. It took about 50 bags full of oranges. Once it was full, Mark’s older brother would come with a forklift and carry it to the edge of the grove and pile the containers until the big truck will come and take them to a packaging plant to be packed and shipped all over the world. Big Jaffa oranges are very popular. They are sweet and juicy, trust me, I had a lot of them that day. By the time we finished (we couldn’t finish before each one of us filled his container) my fingers were numb, my toes were frozen, and my nose couldn’t stop dripping.

 

Winter came and left, and spring vacation was around the bend. My grades were getting better. Dad was about to buy me a guitar. I even had a teacher who liked me a lot, the biology teacher. She was called Yosefa, and she lived on the school’s campus. She drove a cute little green VW beetle. We did a lot of experiments in her class, but my favorite part was when we went on nature hikes. I learned about the difference between the coins snake and the viper. They look very much the same even their head is the same except the shape of the cubes on the back of the snake. The viper has connected brown cubes forming a zigzag pattern on its back. The other snake has the cubes separated they look like brown coins – there for his name. The viper is a very poisonous snake – it had two fangs in his mouth that can kill you within 30 minutes. The coins snake looks the same, I guess to scare predators, but has no fangs and is totally harmless. We also learned about the trees around the school campus. I collected pieces of pine tree bark to carve them in my free time. I made little boats with a small sail to float in the bathtub for my little brother. Instead of getting in trouble with the quarry for trespassing I started to go on mature hikes on my own. Well, not exactly alone, a little black puppy decided to adopt me. He followed me everywhere I went. Together we found a little cave hidden under a bush where I built a little fireplace and a small bench. Whenever I wanted to hide from mean Shimon and his torments this was the place to be. In time I was able to bring scraps from the dining room to feed my little friend and he waited for me every day after school so we can go to our hiding place. On cold days right after the rain, at the bottom of the pine trees, small yellow spongy mushrooms popped out. “They are not poisonous,” I remember Yosefa telling us. “If you look underneath, you will see the mushroom doesn’t have the sections like most mushrooms. It has this sponge, when we pick them, we should cut the top and leave the stem on the ground. This way, the next time it rains it will grow a new top. My favorite meal became fried mushrooms with scrambled eggs which I cooked on the fireplace. From the kitchen I “borrowed” a small frying pan, Eggs I got from the chicken coop when no one was looking, and I managed to have some nice snack to supplement the food I didn’t like in our dining room.

One day, just before Passover vacation, as I was carving a heart on a tree trunk, I heard a little yelp and saw my little friend jump in fear. I looked again and found a snake lifting his head as if to attack the dog. I quickly recognized it as the coin snake. Using a stick, I managed to catch him by his neck and put him in my school bag. In my room I hid the snake in a pillowcase and tied it up until the next day. The first thing I did when school was open was to go to the biology lab and showed the snake to Yosefa. She got very excited. We put it in an empty aquarium, and she promised to feed him and take care of him.

Unfortunately, when I returned from the Passover vacation my little friend was nowhere to be found and when I walked in the biology lab the aquarium was empty and I found my snake in a formaldehyde jar – like the shark in the Alexander river’s restaurant. I said nothing, I just went to my room, picked up my new guitar and walked to my cave and started to learn some guitar cords. The first song I learned to play was Venus by the band Shocking Blue.

The next day, I looked up for Mark’s older brother and we planned my revenge, using the forklift he drives so expertly. Two days later, Yosefa walked out of her little house and couldn’t find her cute beetle. Well, not until she looked up and saw it sitting on her roof.

***

 

 

 

Minestrone

 

 

  Italian soup, again, my vegetarian nondairy version.

 

Ingredients:

1 Cup White Beans or ½ Cup of dry Beans cooked until soft

1 Fresh Tomato

1 Crushed Tomato Can

1 TBSP Tomato Paste

2 TBSP Olive Oil

1 Carrot

½ Onion 

3 Garlic Cloves 

1 Celery Stalk 

¼ Bunch Parsley 

1 Cup Elbow Pasta

½ tsp Oregano

½ tsp Thyme

1 tsp Basil

½ tsp Salt

3 Cups Water

 

Preparation:

  Chop the onion, carrot, celery and parsley, crush the garlic. In a pot, sauté the onion, garlic, celery, carrot, in olive oil. When all is soft add water, tomato paste and crushed tomatoes. Chop the fresh tomato and add to the pot with the spices, herbs, water and elbow pasta. Bring to boil and simmer for an hour.

 

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