There's Gold In Them West Virginia Hills | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: There's Gold In Them West Virginia Hills | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ruth Tredway
02/11/16
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"What I'm telling you is fact. I was there," J.M. Mullins said, nodding his bald head as he leaned forward in the chair.

A young, freckled boy stared at him, and said, "Gramps, you've told that story before."

"Don't get smart with me, boy." The octogenarian wagged a shaky finger at him. "When I was about fifteen years old, in 1891 or so, Dad sent me out with a big old mowin' scythe to mow the pasture field. I was swingin' away with the scythe when I came across a little apple tree about twenty inches tall. It was just a new little apple tree, without another one right close anywhere."

"Pa would've chopped it down, 'cause it was in the wrong place," the boy said.

"I thought to myself, 'Now young feller, I'll just leave you there.' So I swung around the tree, and left it standing. I mowed around that tree many a time. By the time I left home, it was too big to cut."

He paused, took a sip from a brown jug, then swiped his shirt sleeve across his face. "That old farm got passed around from one Mullins to another," he said."By 1905, that was the best apple tree on the farm. Even in the wet or dry years, when crops were small, we had fresh yellow apples all winter."

"Yeah," the boy piped up, "and everybody just called it the Mullins Yellow Seedling, right?"

"Yes, sir, and Mullins yellow apples were getting famous in these parts."

"Tell the part about that tree man that came here, Gramps."

"I'm gettin' to it, boy. Don't rush me." he said, and rubbed his whiskered chin. "In April of 1914, Anderson Mullins owned that farm. When he heard that Stark Brothers Nursery was searchin' for the perfect apple, he took three of his yellow apples from the cellar, boxed 'em up, and sent 'em to Missouri with a note: 'What think you? Are these not the most delicious apples you have ever tasted?'”

"We didn't know if those apples ever arrived, until..."

"That man came here, didn't he?" the boy said, his eyes rounded, his head bobbing.

"He did, at that. In October, a new crop of yellow apples still clung on the tree. One day, a stranger showed up and looked all around. When he spotted that tree, he ran straight to it, and helped himself."

"Didn't he know he could get shot?"

"He never thought about that. Uncle Anderson followed him, and the man said, "That's some apple."

"Name's Mullins," my uncle said, "You're from Stark Brothers? I sent you some."

Paul Stark had traveled a thousand miles by train, then twenty-five miles on horseback, to that little farm outside of Odessa.

"Stark said he first thought it was a common Grimes Golden apple, except the Mullins apples were bigger. After tasting one, maybe more, he was convinced they'd found the best apple ever. He bought the tree and all its fruit, forever, and ordered a high fence built around it. He took some branches home to Missouri, for grafting. Two years later, in 1916, Stark Brothers introduced their newest tree, the Golden Delicious Apple. The farm now belonged to Bewel Mullins, who tended the tree and reported to Stark Brothers."

"Gramps, does that mean we're famous?"

"Well, boy, most folks say Anderson Mullins discovered the Golden Delicious apple. What do you think?"

"It's not right to forget the others."

"No, it's not. It took a lot of people, and maybe a little dumb luck, before there was such a thing as the Golden Delicious apple. The Mullins farm has seen many owners, from my father," J.M. said, rocking gently back and forth, "to Uncle Anderson, and then Uncle Bewel."

"You know what, Gramps? I think you helped, too, when you let that tree grow where it shouldn't have been. If you'd obeyed your pa, it would never have grown big enough to have apples."

"We never figured out how it got there. Maybe an unseen hand carried a stray apple seed to that rocky West Virginia hillside, and it took root."

Years later, at the annual Golden Delicious Festival in Clay County, J. M. Mullins leaned forward in his chair, and said, "I just wanted you and everybody else to know that I'm the fellow that didn't cut down that apple tree seedling one day when I was mowin' the pasture field."

Note: this is a fictionalized story based on actual events, and includes some actual quotes.

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