The other day we were sitting upstairs watching the tube when the doorbell rang. What we were watching must have been engrossing (on afternoon TV?) because it took me a few minutes before I made my way down the steps to see who was at the door.

Nobody was there. Not unusual, though, because UPS and Fed-Ex drivers often stop by the house with a delivery, ring the doorbell, then take off before I get to the door.

Once a month, we get a box of goodies (fresh fruit) which Lou Jr. and Carolyn ordered for us last Christmas.  Pears, apples, kiwi, things like that. So it’s good to get them upstairs and out of the box to see if they need to be further ripened or if they are ready to eat.

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But when I opened the door, there was no box of fruit. It was the wrong time of the month to receive the goodies, anyhow.

I glanced up and down the street and didn’t even see a vehicle driving away. I started to close the door when I saw at my feet four long green things.  No bag, no box, no note. Just four long green things. I picked them up and climbed the stairs with my free prize.  Peggy and I wondered what they were.

They looked like long green squash; or long green cucumbers with crooked necks.

Thinking out of the ordinary, we wondered what couscous look like. I searched the internet for a picture of a raw couscous but only found recipes that showed dishes of yellow stuff that looked like grits. It was evident these things were not couscous, which are not commonly grown around here anyhow.

Before we moved, during the Summer months, it was not uncommon to find bags of tomatoes or okra or beans at my front door.  Our friend Sharon Carpenter supplied us with welcomed fresh garden vegetables at least a half dozen times during the hot weather months.  

So Peg phoned Sharon to ask if she was up to her old tricks.

No, it wasn’t Sharon. She had not been around our place since we moved.

I guess I looked at those things a couple dozen times trying to figure out what I was going to do with them. Finally, I cut one in half for further clues. It looked like a cut cucumber and smelled a little like one.  But if you’ve ever eaten a cucumber from the vine that stayed on the vine weeks too long, you know that its texture becomes pithy and not really edible.

I do thank the anonymous donor for the thoughtfulness, however.  To this day we can’t think of anyone who gardens and who would drop things off at the front door. Those are acts of kindness normally shown by folks you’ve known for a long time and we’ve not settled into our new digs for that many years.

Be that as it may, they’re the largest cucumbers I’ve ever seen and thanks, again. Oh, and by the way, we like corn, beans, yellow squash, avocados, potatoes, beets, peanuts, tomatoes, satsumas, and fish and crabs and candy and cookies and......

Lou Major Sr. was publisher of The Daily News for 34 years (1963-1997) and retired as CEO of Wick Communications.