Caramel Apples and Bubble-Up Soda

I’m not, typically, an impulse buyer when I grocery shop, but, when I saw the display of caramel apples in the produce department, I couldn’t resist. I was especially pleased that they came in two to a pack.

As I traversed through the familiar aisles, picking up the items from my mental shopping list, looking for Bubble-Up soda on the beverage aisle, I eyed those two caramel apples and was swept away to a time when the true meaning of this seasonal treat held a different meaning for me.

I was fourteen, and was in my third week of going to a new high school as a freshman. After trying to find my way to my classes, toiling to open my new locker and facing the tribulations of fitting in with classmates, walking home was a welcomed respite. Autumn was definitely in the air. A crisp breeze blew around my legs, newly fallen leaves dressed in reds and gold danced on the winds, pirouetting like prima ballerinas in the air about me, as I juggled several books and my binder. I wasn’t going home just yet; I had another agenda in mind.

I bounced down the stairs that led to the 7-11 store next to home. I had several dollars in my pocket, my payment for babysitting the evening before. Although I would give the majority of it to my mother, I would spend a small amount of it on myself for once. I pulled open the door to the convenience store, greeted by warm air from the store’s heating system. At the front of the store was a long horizontal drink box. Sliding open the lid, assortments of sodas were nestled in cubes of melting ice. Rummaging through them, fingers tingling from the icy dunking, I found what I was looking for, a sixteen-ounce, green colored bottle of Bubble-Up, a lemon-lime soda.

I popped the cap on the supplied bottle opener, listening to the clatter of it joining many other caps deep within the box's cap collector. Carrying it by the long neck of the bottle, I took it up to the cash register. There I found what I was really looking forward to. Beneath a plastic cover, were several caramel apples with chopped nuts coating them. The cashier lifted the cover for me to select my treat; I chose the largest one on the tray.

Quickly, I paid for my afternoon snack, not worried about what my mother would think about me eating junk food so soon before dinner. Exiting back out into the brisk afternoon sunlight, I retraced my steps back to the steep stairway I had just come down, setting school books on the lower step, using my Social Studies book to separate me from the cold concrete step when I sat down. I placed the open bottle of Bubble-Up next to me, and proceeded to work at removing the ruffled paper cup that the caramel apple rested on, holding it by the wooden stick skewered into the heart of the apple core.

I took a long breath in over the apple, inhaling the sweet fragrance of caramel before taking a bite. The first bite is always the best, the crunch of the apple, joined by the sweet buttery caramel and the chunks of crushed peanuts; a mix of flavor and textures. I almost had to slurp to keep apple juice from trickling out of the corners of my mouth and onto my chin. I closed my eyes, savoring each flavor, chewing slowly, getting immense pleasure from this treat only available this time of the year, in the autumn, and washing it down with a sip of the Bubble-Up.

I was brought out of my reminiscing by a curt “Excuse me!” From a lady holding a young child on her hip. I murmured an apology, still faintly tasting the apple in the back of my mouth. Not hesitating another moment, realizing that I was not going to find any Bubble-Up here, I hurriedly acquired the rest of the things on my mental list, a new determination to return to that autumnal day.

Once I had made my purchase and arrived home, I didn’t bother to put away the groceries, I just opened that plastic container, went back outside, and, once again, enjoyed the tastes of a tart apple, buttery caramel and crushed peanuts. Almost forty years later and I can still taste them!