Flipping through channels the other night I noticed that Toby McGuire was in both Spiderman and The Ciderhouse Rules. Not that Mr. McGuire ‘s roles have anything to do with this story, but it connected synapses in my brain that conjured up memories of a man in California selling apple cider near the mountain town of Julian, east of San Diego. He called himself Ciderman.
I was with a large film crew shooting a campaign when our caravan of 8 vehicles rode into town to scout locations. Apples were the local fruit of legend and cider was sold every hundred yards down the highway. We stopped and the entire crew bought a quart from Ciderman. He was pudgy, hairy, tanned and wore a vintage 1960’s tie-dyed shirt and flip flops.
“Jerry Garcia of the apple orchard,” whispered our producer.
Ciderman heard it and smiled. Whatever. Just buy some juice. He was all business.
We guzzled the juice as we drove. The stuff was tasty. It also had side effects Ciderman didn’t bother to mention. Apple cider is serious roughage. An apple a day keeps the doctor away for a reason. Thirty apples crushed into a thick cider a day will keep everyone away. About 40 miles down the road, all of the vehicles swerved off the bucolic two-lane and we all began running toward the trees.
On our return trip we noticed Ciderman was gone from his post. A hand written, cardboard sign hung out front: “Will return in 10 minutes.”
“He’s probably in the trees over there,” said the director.
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