OY
A lulav is the unopened center leaf of a date palm tree. In Hebrew mythology as well as the Judaic religion, lulavs are mentioned several times, and they play an important symbolic role. In the 21st century, not just any lulav will do for the annual celebration of Succot, one of the Jewish religious holidays. Over the centuries, conservative Rabbis have established a strict set of guidelines for what a lulav must be and not be. It must be so long, but not too long; it cannot be curved or bent; the tip can’t be too pointed, etc. It seems silly to us, but to the orthodox Jews, it is serious business and real business. The very best lulavs come from a particular type of Iraqi date palm called a Dayri, and we have a few dozen of them.
Today, we will be gathering lulavs for Rabbi Abraham Horowitz of Brooklyn. Every fall, Hassidic Rabbis fan out across the few date-growing regions of the southwest U.S. in a kind of competition for lulavs. They buy them from the growers, bundle them, and fly them back to their communities where they double or triple the price and sell them to their orthodox parishioners. Every household is required to have a lulav for Succot, and the rabbis morph into cutthroat businessmen for these few weeks. They have the lulavs, and Jehovah is on their side, and so the temple goers are at their mercy. Oy.
I will be up in one of the boom lifts with Katy. I will drive and maneuver the machine and the basket we are standing in, and she will free-climb the last few feet into the top of the trees, clip the lulavs, and hand them down to me.
She is a remarkable physical specimen. Her dad is black, and her mom is white, and she has inherited superior physical traits from each of them. Tallish, she is as lean and muscular as a greyhound. Watching her climb is sheer pleasure. She has cocoa-brown skin, a mop of curly dark hair that is bronze from the desert sun. She is smooth and sinewy, and sometimes she actually accelerates when going up into a tree top. She climbs with the confidence of a spider and the grace of a gazelle. She wears a pair of baggy shorts and a sports bra with just a suggestion of nipples. OY.
I motor up to the first tree and turn off the machine, and she is off. A foot on the first rail, another on the top rail, and she is out and climbing into the very heart of the huge palm, where the new growth emerges, where life comes from. She pulls a razor-sharp hooked knife out of a pocket, locates the first lulav, cuts it loose, and hands it down to me. Her feet on the tree are at about my eye level, and as I reach up to get the lulav, I am staring up her long legs, her thighs, and up into her baggy shorts. She hands me down the lulav, and for a moment, our eyes meet, and then she is off again for the next one. The lulav is perfect, 4 feet long, firm, and erect with a rounded tip, the precise object of the rabbi’s desire. It’s twenty bucks to me. In less than 5 minutes, we have three lulavs, 60 bucks, and I motor up the row to the next tree. If all goes well, we will get about two thousand dollars worth of these by noon, not a bad little side gig.
We repeat the process, and once again I find myself unavoidably looking up Katy’s body. Her back is to me, and her buttery brown legs disappear up into those shorts, which cling slightly to her small bottom, which appears to be as muscular and firm as the rest of her. I give myself a sharp internal slap. Stop that, you lecher, you are 70 years old and she is 25 and you know her grandparents. They are a couple of years younger than you. Just stop it. She hands me a lulav, bending down to reach me so I don’t have to climb. It’s getting warm and she is sweating slightly, the sports bra clings to her and those two suggestions are now statements. Firm statements.
“ Ah, listen,” I say,” I’m feeling kind of pervy down here, every time I look up to get a lulav I am looking up your shorts.”
She laughs and says, “don’t worry, I’m wearing some big athletic tights for undies, nothing to see.”
“ Well, no,” I start to babble, “It’s not that I’m trying to see anything, I just want to let you know that uh, it’s kind of awkward. I am your boss after all. I’m sure this is highly improper and…” I trail off, sensing I had better just shut up. This might not end well. Of course, as we talk I am glancing up her sleek caramel thighs again. She catches my glance and laughs.
“Relax, I’m not gonna sue anyone. I know you’re not really a dirty old man.” The qualifying word troubles me, but I let it go by. She is right, of course, I’m not REALLY a dirty old man, just an old fool who momentarily let his glands start making his decisions, just like 50 plus years ago. Mike Freeman was right; a moment of teenstupid at 70!
We continue on, collecting the lulavs, repeating the process, and me simply enjoying the moment, the view, and marveling at her youthful physical prowess. Those were the days. The imagined tension on my part is gone and it’s now just work, a fine and beautiful place for us to make some money.
Katy eventually left the farm and headed for the north of San Diego County, where she got a job at a legal cannabis growing operation and did a side gig at farmers’ markets. The population of young men in our area was definitely lacking for her, and I heard that she had given most of them a good-natured try before she moved on to greener pastures. I’ll bet she is working her way through the young male population down there. I wish her well. The attitude toward sexuality in 2025 is so different than when I was coming up that I can’t even formulate an intelligent comment.
Does desire ever truly die? I sure hope not, but you will have to ask someone older than me. I’m fortunate in my 70s to spend time daily with young people. We have a constant stream of them here as temporary workers in the winter months. They help to keep me enthusiastic, mildly irresponsible, and not a bad guy to be around most of the time. They are startled to learn my age, and it is satisfying to watch them have to reconstruct their own stereotypic notions of what it means to be over 70.
I have heard many complaints about the worthlessness of the current young generation, but fortunately, the ones we get here certainly don’t fit that mold. They are less interested in electronics and want to do something real; help harvest real food, learn to run a chainsaw, or do some basic woodworking. For at least this portion of the emerging population, the idea of spending their lives at a keyboard or shuffling other peoples money around holds little interest, even if that is where the money and power are. Who knows what the future holds for our country, but I would suggest that the behavior of many of the people in charge during these chaotic times are setting the worst examples possible for this supposedly wormy generation coming up. I wish them all well. The world has become a highly confusing and more dangerous place for many of us. OY.
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