A long-forgotten short story was brought to my mind by the news that told of Harper Lee’s newly published novel “Go Set a Watchman”, the sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

The story I recalled is Erskine Caldwell’s “The Strawberry Season”. I read it when I was a junior high student, about the same time I saw the movie version of “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

While “– Mockingbird” opened my eye to the social absurdity, “The Strawberry –“ awakened  my pubertal sense.

I read “The Strawberry –“ only once or twice, though I liked it very much. I hadn’t returned to the story ever since, because … I somehow imagined then the green relation between the protagonists, a young boy and a girl, wouldn’t last as the strawberry picking season was to end soon– too sour-sweet a situation for me to bear. I was simply too young, then.

Coincidentally, these stories’ background setting was the Deep South, but I do not know if it had something to do with my early interest in American literature.

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I just now read the “The Strawberry Season” this time in original English. After all these fifty years, the story is again sour-sweet as before;  I am simply too old, today.