Here’s some fruit for thought

My barber, Gay Bech, has earmarked the next few days for berry picking somewhere in the vast huckleberry heaven near Priest Lake.

With 10 species of huckleberry in the Northwest — six varieties in the Colville National Forest alone — berry picking is a delicious annual summer outing for Inland Northwest families.

This year, however, the Bechs will go afield saddled with extra baggage full of either guilt or relief, depending on your point of view.

“My husband impulsively BOUGHT three gallons of huckleberries at a stand before we even went out picking,” Gay said last week, noting with a meek smile that huckleberries are rivaling gold at $35 a gallon.

“Is that pessimistic or what?” she said, going from mildly indignant to snorting within three or four crisp strokes on scissors sharp enough to sever even hardened arteries.

At first I considered going with the positive spin of complimenting her husband, Jim, for being so thoughtful and proactive.

But Gay’s partner, John, was being uncommonly mum, snipping quietly away on another customer, pretending he was not hearing our conversation — a signal that the issue was potentially more volatile than the barber chair taboos of politics, religion and Cougar-Husky allegiances.

I tried to come up with words that would calm Gay before she applied the straight-edge to my neck.

But with billions of huckleberries out there waiting to be picked, I winced at the thought of resorting to a vendor for three expensive gallons of the delectable fruit.

“Oops, sorry,” Gay said, as I winced again. “Do you want a Band-Aid?”

Seasoned huckleberry pickers recognize the precipitous decline from pick-and-plop to cash-and-carry as a symptom of deep psychological torment, or, at the very least, a midlife crisis.

Admitting the $105 purchase to his wife appears to be Jim Bech’s thinly veiled cry for help.

Troubled people, such as the clinically depressed souls who chose this particular year to buy Mariners’ season tickets, might signal their anguish with a sudden dearth of time scheduled for berry picking.

But I knew that taking the barber shop conversation in that direction could possibly have upgraded my medical needs from Band-Aid to tourniquet.

We probably won’t know the extent of Jim Bech’s problem until he deteriorates to the next stage, when he’s likely to do something equally bizarre, such as turning over his entire IRA to the Bhagwan of Berries.

Or maybe the symptoms will be more subtle.

“Has he dyed his hair purple and bought a Harley?” I asked.

Honestly, Jim is not alone.

I wouldn’t be surprised if thousands of our neighbors are suffering to some degree from the physical, social and mental anguish we might call hucklemania.

No wonder.

Admitting that you have no huckleberries in your freezer has become as disgraceful as abandoning your children.

“No huckleberries?” locals will sneer. “Oh, you must have just moved here from California.”

There’s tremendous pressure to have fingers as purple as the Joneses.

But no matter how many gallons you store, someone always has more.

Greed eventually sets in and spurs people to rationalize buying berry-picking claws and rakes in an effort to get more berries in less time regardless of how much damage they do to the plants.

Some quota-obsessed berry-picking Nazis do periodic mouth checks and scream at their kids if their tongues are purple.

Other people put their kids in day care on the days they go huckleberry picking so they have fewer distractions.

Neighbors who might blabber endlessly over the backyard fence — divulging everything from family financial affairs to intimate details on extramarital relationships — will clam up tight and eye you suspiciously forever should you make the slightest inquiry about the location of their favorite huckleberry picking spot.

Huckleberries have permeated our social fabric, and other fabrics, too. I’ve heard trendsetters say you haven’t had the ultimate Inland Northwest sexual experience unless you have purple stains in your underwear.

The social pressure can get to you.

A hucklemaniac eventually would rather sleep in than leave before dawn to beat rivals to the family’s favorite huckleberry patch.

You lose your nerve for cursing the people who inevitably invade your favorite slope with two van-loads of extended family and four pit bulls 15 minutes after you’ve discovered the Purple Mother Lode.

You can no longer face the bears from which you’ve snitched so many meals.

You see commercial pickers as friends rather than invading enemies.

This is serious.

On the other hand, when Jim Bech goes huckleberry picking this weekend, he can relax, and fill some of that cooler space with a beer or two instead of trying to pack it with purple.

He can be at peace with what he picks and not gaze higher up the mountains where the berries will be ripening at increasing altitudes well into September and until a hard frost finally puts the rest of his huckleberry-hounded neighbors out of their misery until next season.

He can reel in his lovely wife from the huckleberry patch a few hours earlier than normal and boost his odds of sweet-talking her into baking a huckleberry pie rather than allowing the berries to wither from freezer burn until he has to make room for next year’s batch.

Most important, buying three gallons of huckleberries in sealed containers gives you a decent chance of getting the bounty to the car without spilling them all over the ground.

But, on the odds-on chance that you trip on a log and spill your bucket full of berries this weekend, don’t cry.

Jim Bech can tell you where to buy a little peace of mind.