This Way to Happy

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, my family should be set for life.

Grandma dips an apple into the pot of melted candy. The syrup makes a stringy bridge between the kettle and the apple’s base until Grandma snaps the string, setting the apple down between us on a clear plastic square.

“Wrap,” she says. She doesn’t have to. I know the signs: naked candied apple with a wooden stick straight in the air—another early morning at the amusement park—time for me to get to work.

Hard work is the Rhoades Family Way.

Up until last summer, my grandpa John whittled the sticks for each and every candied apple, probably imagining each and every visitor with a handmade souvenir. Really, most ended up in the trash (or near the trash, depending on the type of park goer). We never told Grandpa that his hard work might not be worth it in the end.

We buy them in bulk now—the sticks for the apples. Mom says it’s better this way—more “fiscally responsible.” If Grandpa heard her use those words, he’d scrunch his face like the apples had gone rotten. He was a face-scruncher like me.

Grandma Jean ordered the sign on the stand removed when Mom ordered the wooden sticks. The sign read 100% FAMILY MADE, and, as Grandma put it, “Our family worked too hard to start lying to our customers now.”

When Mom and Barnett took the sign down, it left behind a bright red shadow. The whole apple stand used to be that bright, not faded pink like it is now. Grandma wanted to keep the sign. She didn’t want anyone to touch up the paint. The shadow and the sign were reminders. Memories of the park when Grandpa was still here. When things were done his way—the Rhoades Family Way.

I tried to point out that, technically, the candied apples have never been 100 percent family made. They couldn’t be. We never made the plastic wrap or twisty ties that go around the outside of the candied apple. We bought the apples from Ralstons’ farm down the road. And even if Grandpa shaved the sticks with leftover wood from his other projects, it’s not like we “made” the trees that the wood came from.

Yes, we have our own recipe for the candy that we boil.

Yes, we stab the sticks into the apples with our own hands.

Yes, we wrap them with care. But “100% Family Made” was one of Grandpa’s exaggerations. There are one hundred more at the park, no matter the season.

Back then, I told Grandma all this, or a version of this, hoping to make her feel better. Better about removing the sign. Better about buying bulk sticks. Better about Grandpa not being here and demanding his way. Only, Grandma shook her head at it all. She didn’t want to hear it any more than she wanted all the changes to happen. Not then anyway. Now? I’m not sure.
“Wrap,” she says again, and I do.

Wrap. Twist. Tie.

Wrap. Twist. Tie.

Without much brainpower, my hands take over and do the work. It’s like I’ve been programmed for this. Can candied apples get into DNA? If so, they’d be in the Rhoades Family DNA for sure.
My family’s owned this candied apple stand—and the whole amusement park—for over fifty years. I’m not exaggerating. Fifty-three years to be exact.

Obviously Grandma Jean’s got candied apples in her DNA too.

Grandma candied apples with Grandpa on a traveling carnival. Grandma helped Grandpa build
the campground before there was an amusement park. Grandma and Grandpa made the park the largest family-owned amusement park in Pennsylvania. Grandpa reminded everyone he’d meet about that fact. I guess that’s up to us now.

Grandma drags a new apple through the candy, twirls it an inch above the river of syrup. Just as the candy stops dripping, it changes form before our eyes. From a liquid it hardens into a stringy bridge between river and apple. Until—snap! Grandma yanks, sending broken pieces of candy back into the pot of syrup to melt again.

Candied apples line up, one after the other on the counter between Grandma and me.
Wrap. Twist. If I let my brain wander too much, my insides will tie into knots thinking about what today means for our family.

It’s not just an opening day. It’s a big one.

“You’re backing up,” Grandma warns. A sixth snapped bridge. A seventh candied apple. “Don’t let the humidity ruin my apples.”

It’s June-humid in the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania, nothing like late-August-humid, so Grandma’s worried for nothing.

Don’t tell her. Don’t try to explain it away. Pointing out technicalities only makes the worrying stickier. Take it from me.

Before long, Grandma has her first tray of tart apples turned sweet. The copper pot at her side hisses, ready to start a new tray.

“More apples,” Grandma says.

“Let me—” I start, but Grandma’s already lifting the bin of apples from the back door like the crate is cotton candy, not thick wood.

“Grandma,” I warn, sounding every bit like my mom. With the apple cider slushy machine to my right and our counter covered in apples sandwiched next to the pot of boiling red syrup, there’s no way for me to get to her.

She kicks the old crate over with one foot, placing the new crate on top.

“I’m not dead yet,” she says adjusting her apron.

Her words snap against my chest. Grandma picks up a new apple like it’s nothing and plunges the not-100-percent-family-made stick into its core.

She’s a one-woman show. She got that from Grandpa. Or he got that from her. I guess I wasn’t around to see who started it first, but they’re all the same—Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, even my aunt and cousin—one-person shows.

Why wait for help when you can kick the crate over yourself?

There was a time when I’d stand on those overturned crates to do the same job I’m doing today. I don’t need the crate anymore. Back then, we’d all fit in here—me and Grandma, Grandpa and my cousin Nic too.

It’s not just that I’m bigger. The space has grown tighter in other ways.

When Mom bought the slushy machine last summer, Grandpa said, “That’s the nail in the coffin.” I’m not quite sure what he meant, but it feels just wrong to think about him saying it now. No matter how delicious the slushies taste, when the sour cider hits my tongue all I think about is Grandpa and coffins.

Grandma startles me, slapping a new metal tray onto the counter ready for more apples. Only, just like with the crate, I’m not quick enough. Her new tray hits my plastic wrappers, and they go fluttering into the air.

“Whoops,” she says. “John’s right—that slushy machine doesn’t belong.”

“Was right,” I remind her. “Grandpa was right.” It comes out mean, even though I don’t mean it that way.

“No need for a bug face,” Grandma says, even though she’s the one with puckered lips.

Just because there isn’t a need for my face to curl doesn’t mean I can relax it, any more than I can stop my brain from bubbling with memories like boiling candy.

Wrap. Grandpa isn’t here today to say the things he would.

Twist. I was just pointing that out.

Tie. Today’s not like any other day.

Grandma shines an undipped apple against her apron. Before piercing it, she looks back at me, points the stick right at my scrunchy face. “I feel him with us today, Bug.”

Snap.

“It should be raining,” I say. My face relaxes a little, my shoulders too.

Grandma shakes her head. “No rain,” she says, pointing a stabbed apple toward the front window. “It’s a good sign. He’s watching out for us.” She hums and settles back into a flow.
Before too long her crate of apples all have sticks in them. She pulls the wooden paddle from the side of the pot. If we lived somewhere else, that paddle could row us down a river, but instead it stirs the settled candy from the bottom of the pot, adjusting the flow of heat, ready for more apples. Grandma returns to dipping.

And me? I return to my wrappers.

Grandma dips and I wrap my head around the fact that today isn’t what I thought it would be at all. I thought we’d wake to rain. A complete washout. A giant stop sign from Grandpa in his new universe saying, “No! You can’t open the park without me.”

Wrap. Twist.

Maybe my aunt is right. What’s the point of owning the park now that Grandpa’s gone? Aunt Caroline says, “Isn’t it time we try something new?”

Something new sounds like a good thing, but everything here was once new and now look what happened. New things become old, just like my grandpa.

This apple stand was once new. Grandpa built it with his own two hands.

He built the lemon stand too. It opens right down the middle. He imagined it, and then made it. He built everything at the park, and everything was once new.

Wrap.

Grandma fills a second tray while my mind swirls.

“Don’t worry,” she says. Instead of warning me to get busy, she says, “Give me some ties.”
Grandma leans over the tray across from me. Her face round like mine.

Her fingers dance from apple to apple, wrapping and twisting.

She’ll make candied apples in big batches each day from June to September. Trays of candied apples and caramel apples too, chocolate dipped and even double dipped. Sometimes she adds sprinkles or mini marshmallows—her version of trying something new.

Wrap. Twist.

Her apples are one of the treats that tie families to the Rhoades Family Amusement Park, summer after summer.

The apples are made fresh daily. Maybe that’s enough? If customers want apples from Grandma, we’ll give the people what they want.

Giving people what they want has always been the Rhoades Family Way.