Scott Bremner

The car had barely come to a stop before both back doors flew open.

“That one’s mine!”

“I saw it first.”

“Lord,” I would think, “these children will fight over anything.”

“Okay, kids, we don’t want to carry these things all through the store. Let’s go inside first and then we can grab the pumpkins on the way out.”

So in we would go, carrying on an annual tradition followed since the girls were bundled and carried in baskets.

It was Saturday morning, the air was crisp and the leaves painted a spectrum of red, orange and yellow.

The Bremners were going to Fuhrman’s Cider Mill.

The kids would always run ahead to get to the little paper cups by the coolers that held the free cider samples.

Dad, ignoring repeated pleas to buy just about everything in sight, stayed patient in picking up the basket of apples, the gallon of cider and of course the three pumpkins needed for the stoop and two front stairs of the house.

It always wound up being more than the two grown arms and four short ones could carry, which was okay because the second trip left room for a pan of breakfast pastries from the bakery.

It was more than a trip to the store.

It, more than Halloween candy or sweatshirts or raking leaves, defined the fall season.

It was one of those small moments between parent and child that always seem to find a way to the top of the memory, even years later.

The Bremners didn’t make it to Fuhrman’s this year.

It wasn’t a conscious choice but rather a confluence of events that conspired to rob us of the opportunity.

“Ah, we’ll go next weekend,” I thought, time after time, until last weekend when I saw the video of the flames first consuming the wooden building and then leaping into the night sky.

One hundred eleven years of business gone in a matter of minutes and along with it generations of memories lost in the smoke.

The owners are hoping to rebuild but I’m told that tighter food laws have made a brand new cider business extremely expensive.

I hope they can, not so much for my children but for other kids yet to come.

For another Dad looking for that brief moment that can define a season.

For another family looking for a shared memory that can last a lifetime.