I have been eating Joe Poor apples lately. They are delicious.
Poor, a squeaky retiree, blew through Haines about 15 years ago. He got in with the Chamber of Commerce and fashioned himself something of a rooster, crowing about this and that. He seemed to have a kind heart under a protective coating of bluster.
Joe’s lasting contribution to our town amounted to more than 100 apple saplings he found on sale at Costco. He brought them north and gave them away, envisioning cheery lanes of apple blossoms along our Main Street and Fort Seward.
Some people complained that Joe was creating a bear attractant, but Joe wasn’t deterred. To his credit, people embraced his dream. Various groups volunteered to plant and adopt them, including students who planted a few in front of the old primary school on Main Street. Others took root near the post office and along Portage Street.
Unfortunately, the effort was more about planting than maintaining. Over time, snowplows buried and destroyed the knee-high trees, moose and bears ate others, voles girdled them in winter and weeds choked them out in the spring.
Perhaps eight of Joe’s trees remain but a few seem to be thriving, including at Third and Main and out front of the American Bald Eagle Foundation. Some people mistake them for crab apples and few, it seems, stop to pick them.
That’s too bad. The apples are small but tasty, mostly reddish-green and tart but also crunchy and fresh off the tree, a big improvement over apples from the grocery store that taste either old or manufactured in a lab. And they’re much tastier than the overhyped Yellow Translucent variety, our “pioneer” apple tree that’s only good for applesauce.
Many people pass through Haines. Some live here a lifetime and never lift a finger to make a contribution. Joe Poor left us apple trees. Not unlike the people who arrive in this northern valley, a few survived, took root and produce fruit regularly.
I’m grateful for the people and the trees that make it here, and to Joe Poor for making the effort.