DRYING GRAPES BY FM RADIO

It started by accident. I think it was for lack of space that I first placed a scrawny twig of red grapes atop my old radio/stereo thingamajig. I figured they’d hear some Mozart, or some blues--and get to be close to the window, where they might see some last rays of sun before they die--or maybe I’d pop one of the little wrinkled, overripe things in my mouth on a rebellious whim.

I forgot about them after a while.

Then one day I looked at them--and they were perfect raisins. At least six of them were. The ones that had clung to their scrawny little stems had fallen victim to that white mould that forms on rotting grapes. Since then, my observations lead me to believe that the mould is a manifestation of the hatred of the grape by its shriveled stem--the little nonentity who has given so much of itself by pouring the goodness and sweetness of its life-giving sap into the ungrateful little wretch. It is a white sickness that will slowly dissolve the unwitting grape. It’s all very ugly. Don’t fuck with Mother Nature.

In any case, there those six raisins were—a living tribute to serendipity. Dried inside of a week by WQXR or WNYC or WBGO or Spotify or my CDs. It was warm atop the machine—the top was a screen/grid to let the heat escape. It was perfect!

Since those early eureka moments I’ve been recycling instead of trashing the grapes that I don’t eat soon enough. I have a problem with grapes—and, actually, a lot of fruit—in that I begin with fervor, then slack off and let the stuff rot. But no more, not when it comes to grapes at least. I did winter strawberries once (what else can you do with those sorry imposters?) but most of the drying occurred inches from a hot steam pipe.

Keep in mind that these are raisins of prodigious size, something that suggests to me that raisin grape growers are raising relatively small grapes. Mine are the ones that are sold to be eaten—big, juicy, sweet. I have recently discovered that, among the red grapes that are available these days in these here parts (Manhattan Island, lower half, in April), the rule is: the darker the sweeter--also, often, the larger as well.  So I await the latest harvest…the darker ones. I will taste-test the small of the dark ones against the largest of the redder ones, and we’ll just see.

When I summered in Oregon, I used to dry things on the porch in bamboo and screen driers. When that proved to be too long a wait for my New York sensibilities (and it drew bugs), I bought electric drier trays at yard sales and sooner or later caught on that the reason no one wanted the things was the electricity it cost. Dedicated electricity like that erases any cost-effectiveness that drying your own fruit has.

But I listen to my old stereo all the time. Yeah, it’s an energy consumer and all that, but it has cool interface features that make it unnecessary for me to play computer music with that clever but costly Bluetooth nonsense. The whole hookup cost me forty bucks, and now my Bose speakers are blasting whatever I’m listening to on line—iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, whatever. And I’m drying grapes.

I have attached the “schematic” for my hookup, if there are any adventurous Rube Goldberg types out there…with a good strong magnifying glass and a healthy sense of humor….[but seriously, if you want a larger copy, message me.)