Every year, Old Sturbridge Village has Apple Days during the first weekend in October. It’s when they harvest their apples and do various demonstrations of what people in the 1830’s would have done with the apples. The farmhouse girls make pie, the small house has heirloom varieties tasting, the big house girls make apple molasses, the tavern makes mulling sachets, the tinsmith makes corers, and the big thing - the cider mill is open!
Now, I first went to OSV in the 1980’s. It’s a standard school trip for pretty much any Massachusetts child. I only went once as a child and I fell in love with the place. Since moving to Southbridge (the town next door to Sturbridge), my sweetie and I have become members and we go a couple times a year.
In all the time I’ve been going to OSV, the ONE THING I have never seen, is the cider mill in operation.
I am a huge fan of fall and everything that goes along with it. I love apples. I adore cider (what we call cider, not what they called cider in the 1830’s). I wanted to see the darn thing running.
Last year, my sweetie and I made the decision that we’d go on the second day of the Apple Days demonstrations - Sunday. We spent Friday night working on the Jeep and he had planned for more of that on Saturday. I planned to do homework. I had a big paper on Plato due the following week and I hadn’t even started it yet.
On Saturday morning, we took a trip to Home Depot because he needed a tool. I’m not sure why I went with him; it was probably cabin fever. While we were in the tool department, I noticed him stretching his arm a lot. He didn’t seem happy. Then he admitted that it hurt, probably from the work he had done the night before.
I jokingly asked him if he was having a heart attack.
He assured me that he wasn’t and we bought the tool and started to drive home. When we were about half way home, my sweetie said to me, “Please take me to the ER”.
Now, I don’t know about you but when HE says that to me, I comply - no questions asked. We’ve been together for 12 years (mostly) and he has only said that to me twice. Hell, when he had a massive eye infection, I had to threaten him before he’d agree to go to the ER.
So, unfortunately by this point we were past the point of no return. We had to return to Southbridge and go to Harrington Hospital. When we had been at Home Depot, we could have chosen from any of 3 hospitals in Worcester, all of which were closer to us than Harrington was when he asked to go. We finished the 15 minute drive and raced him into the ER.
One of the benefits of living in a small town with its own full service hospital, is that the ER rarely has a wait. Not that this mattered in this case. Saying, chest pain and arm pain is a sure way to get into a room and hooked up to 50 different machines before they even ask your name.
While the registration lady asked me all the pertinent information, my sweetie was hooked up to every machine in the ER. A nice lady came from the lab and drew his blood. I debated whether or not to call his mother but eventually decided to wait a bit longer.
All the preliminary tests indicated that he was not having a heart attack. The ER doctor started talking to him about panic attacks, while we waited for the CT scan to be free.
After he had his CT scan, we went back to the ER and the doctor came back in. I assumed that she was going to tell him he was fine and to go home and avoid stress. Instead, she started examining him even more thoroughly. She wasn’t talking. I was getting scared.
She started asking if he had been on a plane recently or if he lived a sedentary life. I started to see where this was going. Finally she said, “The blood test indicated that you have a blood clot but we don’t know where and we don’t know why.”
He was sent back for another CT, this time with contrast. While the scans were digitally sent to Beth Israel, we prepared him to spend at least one night in the hospital. I called his mother after trying to figure out how to start the conversation in a way that wouldn’t cause HER to have a panic attack.
At that point, there was nothing more I could do and his mother and older brother were on their way to see him so I went home to tend to the poor dogs who were supposed to have only been alone for an hour. It had been about 6 hours at this point and they still hadn’t even had breakfast.
After tending to the girls, I packed up his stuff and went back to the hospital.
He ended up being in the hospital for 3 nights. They wouldn’t let him leave until his Coumadin level was high enough. They also gave him Heparin shots but he wasn’t cooperating. It took a lot longer than they expected for his level to get to a good number. I spent most of those 4 days sitting next to his bed, doing my Plato paper while he watched cartoons and we waited to find out why his blood was clotting too much.
The food at Harrington Hospital is amazingly good.
Anyway, he finally got to go home on Tuesday. The girls were so happy to see him but we had to keep them behind a gate until they calmed down. We couldn’t risk them scratching him. He spent an additional week giving himself Heparin shots before his Coumadin level was satisfactory.
I got an A- on my paper.
We never did find out why he started clotting abnormally. He is still taking blood thinners and his numbers still fluctuate to bad levels occasionally. In June he came within 1 day of being hospitalized again before the increased meds did their job.
We didn’t finish working on the Jeep until months later.
We never did make it to Apple Days.
Until yesterday. We had agreed that we would go this year, no matter what and go we did. While we were getting ready to go, I asked my sweetie if he had checked the OSV website to see what was going on today. He mentioned all the stuff I knew about but added one that surprised me. “The Cobbler will be making pies.” Um…ok… “Are you sure about that?” I asked? This was followed by him laughing like a loon when he realized what he had said and the dogs looking at him like he had lost his mind.
We ate at the tavern for lunch, which had hot mulled cider of course. We watched the girls in the farmhouse making pie and I saw a parsnip for the first time in my life. The potter wasn’t super busy like he usually is so when we went in his shop, we found him giving a lesson to a cute little girl while her mom watched - all three of them obviously thoroughly enjoying themselves. I saw a massive toad on the path. He walked. I’ve never seen a toad walk before. The guy in the cider mill was very nice and we spent about half an hour asking him questions.
It was raining and chilly but we went and we had fun and for the first time in over 20 years, I got to see the damn cider mill in operation!
Of course, the most important thing is that WE went. My sweetie is still with me and I firmly believe that the lab and ER doctor are the reason why.
Our pictures from OSV Stop when you get to the Terrible Iggy Dammit or else you’ll see the nastiness on my foot that’s getting checked out today.
<Me smiling.