Free The Sugar Season by Douglas Whynott

remember him driving at ten, but Bruce thinks it was closer to twelve. He was twelve when he started an apple cider business after he saw an ad for a cider press. Ken lent him the $25 to buy it, taking cider in payment. He gave Bruce a motor to run the press and took cider payment for that as well. In the fall, when the apples ripened, Bruce and the girls would get into the family car—he was twelve, Judy ten, and Nancy eight—to drive to abandoned orchards and find rogue trees to gather apples. They pressed, filtered, and bottled the cider in the dairy barn. They found customers by phone calls and by knocking on doors, though Bruce’s sisters did that work because Bruce couldn’t talk on the phone or knock on anyone’s door. He sold the cider for 75 cents a gallon, sometimes carrying it to school on the bus to pass to his customers’ children. He was clever enough to offer Judy and Nancy a 10-cent commission on the empty jugs, which ensured a steady supply. Bruce kept up the cider business into high school, accumulating a $600 savings account.
    Driving a car at ten, a tractor at twelve, and running the evaporator at about the age of ten could be hazardous. Bruce’s way of saying this was, “I wasn’t an inexpensive kid.” He destroyed a couple of trucks, and he tipped over the tractor, almost severely injuring his leg. Ken built a stand for Bruce so that he could see into the evaporating pan. A couple of times he let the sap get too low in the pan, which scorched and opened up leaks. Ken lectured him at high volume, repaired the pan with hacksaw blades and epoxy, and, after the season, bought a new one. When it came time for Bruce to take the test for his driver’s license, Ken sent him to Keene alone in the farm pickup, saying there was no point in wasting an afternoon. When the registry officer asked Bruce what he would do if he failed the test, Bruce answered that he would probably just drive home.
    Bascom family vacations were usually spent at maple meetings. If the meeting was in, say, central New York, Ken got everyone up at 3:00 in the morning, loaded up the car, and drove until they reached Binghamton or Syracuse or Croghan, talking maple all the way. Bruce remembered loving it. At the meeting Bruce would absorb as much as he could, but in his memory he was the boy standing in the shadows, unable to get out a complete sentence.
    Ken set the schedules for his kids. They worked on the farm after school and on weekends. None could play sports because they were a waste of time. Each child played in the school band because Ken believed that art had value in a child’s development. Once they started they weren’t allowed to quit. Bruce played drums.
    When the time came to tap the trees the family worked in the woods, except for Ruth. They started at 7:30 in themorning and worked until dark, with a tiered level of responsibility. Ken drilled the holes while another older worker might set the spouts. Bruce hung the buckets, and Judy and Nancy put on the lids. This meant slogging through the snow all day. Back at home at night they stood by the heating registers trying to warm their feet.
    As Bruce grew older, Ken scheduled the tapping around the school vacations in mid-February, even though that was early to begin tapping trees. School kids were an important part of Ken’s labor force, as was true for many sugarmakers with thousands of buckets. By normal standards, a producer would employ one worker for every 500 buckets, which meant Ken would have twelve to fourteen people working for him, but it was more like two or three men and a group of kids. When the flow began Bruce brought friends home from school to earn a little money emptying buckets. The memory of this time was one of Bruce’s favorites—the skilled old men Ken hired to tap and drive spouts, the sight of the tractors pointed toward the woods, he and his friends arriving after school. The boys running to empty the buckets, trying to impress the