The Ketchup Factory — Days Long Past
When I was a boy, summer vacation from school started the first week in June and ended the first week of September. By the end of those three months, summer vacation seemed like it lasted forever. I became bored with it – summer was too long. I eagerly awaited autumn and couldn’t wait to get back to school – or should I say, to get back to my friends in school.
Now I’m an old man sitting here in late July, finding it extremely difficult to believe that in just a little more than a month, summer will dissolve into autumn. Winter will come in on autumn’s coattails with its bitter cold and wintry mixes of rain, sleet, and snow.
And just imagining winter’s bone-chilling breath makes my old arthritic bones ache, and my aging heart yearn.
Incomprehensibly, I find myself in the winter of my life. August is but a calendar flip away, and autumn’s colorful finale just one frosty morning away.
Autumn is a sad season — a season when bright green trees, in one brilliant last gasp, burst into yellows and oranges and reds, in an unrivaled celebration of the fierce tenacity of life.
Yet, after the leaves dance their final colorful reprise, they drop to the ground unceremoniously, broken, brown and brittle; dead before the worst of winter comes.
I find a curious, nostalgic twist in all of that — one that is difficult to describe or make tangible, perhaps because those days are long past and won’t come again, save for the memories that live in my heart.
With a soft sigh of resignation, I drift back in time and remember trucks loaded with red, ripe tomatoes, piled high and jiggling as they rattled over bumpy side streets on their way to the factory. It was a ketchup factory, where they made Vacationland Ketchup — my grandfather’s favorite, and therefore mine.
It came in oddly shaped bottles and was sold in only a few places in Ohio. It doesn’t matter anymore; Vacationland Ketchup went the way of vacuum tubes and trolley cars. But I’ll never forget it — not for how it tasted on French fries and fried eggs, but for how the factory smelled while the ketchup was cooking down.
I vividly remember waking up on a late August morning in my bedroom on the second floor of my grandparents’ house in Sandusky, windows wide open, curtains fluttering, and the smell of ketchup cooking at the factory just a few blocks away, drifting through the summer morning air. It was an early scent of autumn that swirled through that air, and it meant summer vacation was nearly over; autumn was on its way.
The smell of the cooking ketchup reminded me that it wouldn’t be long before I’d be jumping into huge piles of crispy, brown leaves in front of the houses on our street, playing and having fun as I waited with my friends for the school bus to arrive.
Not long after that, the smell of burning leaves settled over the whole city — the unmistakable smell of the seasons changing, the smell that reminded us all to enjoy those few remaining bright blue autumn days, because winter’s biting winds were waiting, still hidden away in some dark and frozen place.
I don’t believe progress always makes things better. I think we often rush ahead and leave the best of ourselves behind. Nothing reminds me of that more than the smell of a ketchup factory that no longer exists, and a boy who no longer exists — except inside me, in thoughts like these, on mornings like this one, when I can’t help but encourage myself to remember.
I love reading about your memories.
Judy
I really enjoyed this essay. It had me thinking back to my childhood memories at my grandparents’ house every Sunday after church. My cousins and I would go down to the little store on the corner to buy penny candy. Flying down the big hill a block from my house on sleds in the winter and the bottom frame of my Mom’s old baby carriage in the summer–at least until the day the brake broke off in my hand and my friend and I went flying through 2 streets, managing to crash against the curb just before reaching the intersection of my town’s main street. My hometown in Eastern PA has changed quite a bit from when I was young, but it still has just one stoplight on the main street, which was installed a few years after my near-death experience! LOL! I’m 71 and enjoyed revisiting my childhood memories for a little while. Thank you for sharing yours, allowing me to remember mine.
What an enjoyable read this was about your memories,pertaining to Ketchup and other memories at different times.. Yes,Out trees will be undressing soon getting ready for their sleep session ,Alot of them become naked, a few (fir trees) keep their pajamas on meaning they don’t become naked but somehow lose their needles and do their change without us noticing . Enjoy your day.
Such a nice story, I really like your stories they are so heartwarming and feel good stories. You should try writing a book I think you could.
I always enjoy your essays, you are very talented leaving the readers so with warm fuzzy feelings. Thanks.
I too love your stories from long ago and I’ve said that several times. What really made me stop to read this one was that it was about ketchup, and I thought it was about something you wrote about ketchup way back when describing the ingredients and that you were no longer eating the American one and I thought started on the Canadian one until they started putting the same crap in theirs.
I recently read on-line, of course, that the European ketchup is much healthier than the North American ones and read the ingredients on the bottle. It seemed that that was correct and if I could, I’d send you a planeload from the Netherlands.
I’m sorry I’ve gone off track with what you have written in your story about the seasons. Yes, your writing does take me as well as many others way, way back in years and when I read one such as this, I feel so melancholy when I think about those things we can never bring back. These are things which I really loved in my younger years but do not enjoy so much as I have aged and suffer from some of those ails which older folks do.
This coming Saturday, I am flying to Canada and maybe I could bring you a half plane full of the red stuff. Good idea?
Hi, Actually we now have lots of different organic ketchups that are made with real stuff. Right now I’m buying Hunts All Natural ketchup. None of the new ketchups are made with fresh, red, ripe tomatoes, not even Heinz Canadian …not even New Zealand’s Hellman’s They’re all made with tomato concentrate from red, ripe, tomatoes. I’ve tried them all. And I’ve no ketchup factories near me to churn out those tomato-y memories. We can never really bring back those good old days. I wonder if they ware actually as good as we remember?