Ode to the apple guy

In memory of Paul Smith

This essay has been a long time in the making. I knew I wanted to write about it but delayed getting started. But here it is, after weeks and months of fits and starts, journaling and writing and refining.

Miss you, Mr. Paul.

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Every year in late August, a long, white plastic table appeared under a simple awning at the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market. Beneath it sat a wooden sign painted with a colorful basket of fruit and the words “Little River Farm.” And standing behind it, surrounded by an array of seasonal bounty that cycled from peaches, nectarines and plums to an eye-popping variety of apples, was the man I came to know as my “apple guy:” Paul Smith.

Jovial, good-natured, and generous, Paul was fixture of the market for as long as I can remember. Seeming to hover perpetually somewhere in his 60s, he reminded me of no one more than Floyd, bassist for Muppet band The Electric Mayhem. Same ever-present hat, same slightly crazy tufts of hair sticking out the sides, same laid-back vibe.

His apples were the best in the Capital Region — so good that, at some point during the 15 or so years I knew him, I started buying entire bushels. He brought them to the market piled high in sturdy wooden boxes and never let me leave without throwing in a few extra. Other times, he let me take whatever I wanted of the bruised, ugly, and sometimes slightly rotten fruit he culled. And when I wanted a couple of apples for a kid a church, Paul handed them to me for free. I got the impression that’s just the kind of guy he was.

Paul was the one who recommended Courtlands as the best pie apple. My mom fell in love with the flavor and started asking for them every year. I’d grab her a basket as soon as they came in season, and a pie stuffed with a mountain of chopped spiced apple-y goodness would inevitably follow.

I don’t know when I first told him that my long-standing nickname was Sam, but from that time on, he called me “Sammie.” Like the weekend I spotted him as I was coming out of the Arts Center on River Street and greeted him: “Mr. Paul!” He replied with an enthusiastic, “Sammie!” and a friendly side hug.

When the farmers market shut down during COVID, I couldn’t imagine going without Paul’s incomparable fruit. So I gave him a call, as I usually did when I wanted to order a bushel, and asked if he’d be okay with me making the hour-long drive to his orchard in Hudson to pick some up. Classic Paul, he said yes and put two bushels out with a bucket nearby for me to leave the money. That was the only time I ever saw Little River Farm: a sprawling operation that produced the wide variety of fruit that appeared at the market each year from late summer to early spring.

And then there were the chestnuts. Paul’s chestnuts became a fixture of our Christmas Eve dinner, the “Caramelized Onion-Butternut Chestnut Roast” from the classic plant-based cookbook Veganomicon. A big casserole dish of roasted chestnuts, onions, butternut squash with white beans, served with a side of balsamic roasted Brussels sprouts and homemade cranberry sauce — what could be better?

But I didn’t stop by Paul’s table just to snag a few extra Mutsus or make sure Christmas Eve dinner wasn’t missing a key ingredient. I stopped to talk, sometimes for quite a while if the market was slow. Over time, our discussions progressed from chats about life and his farm to deeper subjects like faith, the Bible, and God.

I was early in my Christian journey but growing in the faith and beginning to feel more comfortable bringing up spiritual subjects. And Paul was open to spiritual conversations. He told me about his sister who went to church, and I got the impression that she talked to him about God, too. But given Paul’s tendency to joke, it was hard to tell how seriously he took it all.

Regardless, I always included him when I delivered Christmas cards to market vendors the weekend before the holidays. I tried to pick cards that were appropriate for a single young woman to give a single older man who could best be described as my farmers market buddy. I often tucked a tract inside, something to convey the theological realities of Christmas and its implications for eternity.

I sent him other cards sometimes, including the year that a cold snap after a stretch of unseasonably warm weather killed his entire stone fruit crop and most of his apples. I can’t remember what I wrote in it. I just wanted him to know I was thinking about him, that I was praying for him and I cared. Over the years, I felt compelled to include messages with more depth and weight, directed at his personal spiritual need and rooted in my care for him as a friend.

Because he was my friend. Not just the apple guy or a vendor I saw a lot or a farmer I knew well.

And from what I’ve heard, many vendors and marketgoers felt the same way. Kind to all, Paul was a beloved presence, an expected fixture, someone people looked forward to seeing from the start of stone fruit season until his apples ran out somewhere between January and April. Every year, without fail, Paul was there.

So was I. I went to the market every weekend for years, wandering up and down the Market Block in the summer and around the Uncle Sam Atrium in the winter, stopping to browse produce and products and talk to vendors without worrying about time.

But as my schedule got busier, visits to the market became hurried and transactional instead of a time to slow down and connect with the people around me. Meaningful conversations, including with Paul, became fewer and farther between. I always had somewhere else to go and a time at which I had to be home to “get things done.” Things like cleaning and cooking that I saw as necessities but, admittedly, could have waited.

There were days when I wanted to stop and talk with Paul, but I was in too much of a rush. Or he was with a customer or off wandering the market as he was wont to do, and my rigid schedule didn’t allow me to wait. So I dashed through and headed off without even touching base to say hi.

Sometime during this self-imposed frenzy, I noticed Paul seemed unwell. He was losing weight and lacked his usual boundless energy. It concerned me, but I didn’t say anything. And I didn’t stop to ask if he was okay. I just kept going, ruled by the tyranny of the “important” tasks I believed had to be done by the end of the day.

And then…he was gone.

It really was that sudden. In August of this year, another long-time farmer friend who was close to Paul told me Paul had been in the hospital having a brain tumor removed. I was stunned. Though I’d noticed the decline in Paul’s health, I hadn’t suspected cancer.

The outlook seemed good at first. People saw Paul working in his fields, apparently on the mend. But a few short weeks later, his rally became a downturn, and he died in early September.

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It’s strange how someone can become a fixture of your life through something as mundane as visits to a farmers market stall. And then one day, things aren’t like that any more. You get older, and your routine changes. Parts of your life you figured would always be there, even obviously finite parts like people, disappear.

New routines, new traditions, and new people come, but they don’t fill the gap left by what came before. They take up the time, they become part of the rhythm, and you eventually adapt. Then you start to take those new things for granted and somehow forget they won’t be there forever. And suddenly, they too are gone.

It’s so easy to delay conversations, to prioritize tasks that don’t really matter. You feel more comfortable or productive in the moment but don’t realize you’ll inevitably look back with regret after you miss your last chance to do what was most worthwhile.

And as I look back and remember Paul, I see lessons I’d do well to heed while I still have a chance with others:

Make time for people. Make space for memories.

Don’t be so attached to routine that you can’t lay it aside when something more important comes up.

Never be so busy that you miss out on moments of relationship.

Stop and talk to the apple guy. And let him know you care.

Featured photo by Alex Belogub on Unsplash