Scrumping in the Popular Culture

A follow up to last night's first post:

I was driving home last night, and heard the Who's 5:15 on the radi-adi-o. Sure enough, a scrumping reference:

On a raft in the quarry
Slowly sinking.
On the back of a lorry
Holy hitching.
Dreadfully sorry
Apple scrumping.
Born in the war
Birthday punching.

Not having picked up on this before (I'm relatively new to my orchard-despoiling), I verified the lyrics on teh t00bz (an effort of dubious utility), and I found an interesting thread on gleaning and usufruct. This anecdote, from commenter "Keith Talent", amused and impressed me to no end:

When we were kids, my mother was a devoted canner, her favourite game, (still is actually) was "lets pretend we're poor," which dovetailed nicely with her other favourite passtime (sic) "Lets save pennies." Explaining the cost of driving across town to save on tinned tuna wasn't really a savings due to gas and time did not compute for her.

Anyway, the local high security prision (sic) had a number of apple trees on the grounds, outside of the formal prison proper but within a barbed wired yard. Mom marched up to the gate, informed the gaurds (sic) on duty she was a taxpayer and intended to not see the apples fall uneaten to the ground agian (sic), she was here to pick them with her two young sons. She'd make applesauce.

Unbeleiveably (sic) they allowed it, we picked apples on the prison yard. I liked my mom for throwing nice apples over the fence to the prisoners on excercise break in the actual yard. My brother and I were completely terrified the whole time. We never went back a second time, I suspect my father probably forbid it, or maybe my brother and I whining made the apples cost more than they were worth.

Man, I would love to meet Mama Talent, and give her a hearty high-five.

The thread commenters also mention the wonderful documentary The Gleaners and I. Being a nerd, I thought it was a great date movie, as foreign-language documentaries tend to weed out non-nerdlicious prospective mates.