geoffrey

3/20/20

The Marmalade Walk was a lot shorter than anticipated. Maybe a mile in total. Turns out, one good orange tree has an awful lot of oranges on it.

It only took a short amount of rifling through the tree on 10th and Campbell to yield five-ish pounds of oranges.

The first recipe called for five pounds of oranges, and the second one just said “lots.” And - well, guessy recipes were always more my style, anyway, and Geoffrey seemed to think the bag felt like it was about five pounds. 

When Geoffrey approached us I was obviously slightly nervous that he owned the tree and he was going to tell me to stop pilfering his branches. That He Was American and It Was His Tree and so even though he wasn’t using the oranges, I Oughta Get Off His Property. Or something.

But, as it happened, the man who was Geoffrey stopped a fairly safe distance away and just said that he'd tried one of these oranges before, and that it didn't taste very good.

Really? I said. Maybe I'm weird. I just like them sour.

Sour? He replied.

Yes. Sour.

I’m not sure if he just didn’t hear me correctly or if he didn’t know the word. Sour. Sow-er.

We got to talking while I rummaged. He pulled an orange off and ate it messily, pushing his fingers into the pulp so that little fountains of juice sprayed all over his shirt. He had tattoos all over his hands, and tattoos all over his face, too. A crooked front tooth that overlapped the other one. He was saying something about a man who was working on the house up the street, and asked if I knew if he was still asking around for workers, and I said sorry, no. I don't live on this street.

Once I thought I was done, I handed him the bag and asked what he thought. Does that seem like five pounds to you?

I resisted the urge to say that back home, five pounds was called a fiver if you were talking about money. As opposed to free oranges.

Just about, he said. He was still holding the bag when he said his Gramma used to make marmalade out of oranges. Or, in his words: Orrrn-giz. 

I retrieved the bag and shook his hand with the wrong hand because Sonny was in my right one. And I asked his name, and when he said his name was Geoffrey I smiled and said that's my dad’s name.

It’s a little-known fact that Geoffrey is my dad's legal first name. Brian changed his mind after the birth certificate was signed, so Geoffrey Peter Longworth became Pete. GP Longworth, which is funny because it was his sister who became a doctor.

Either way: I've got a lot of oranges now, and a whole day to figure out how to make something Brian might have liked.