PORT NECHES  – Jim Kasper doesn’t pick his fruit. He twists it off the bush, to save the skin.

“The grandchildren all know that. We don’t waste any of it,” Kasper said, showing his twist technique that separates still-a-little-green satsumas from a bush about as big as a mini-van.

To think, they didn’t think that tree would take when he and his wife, Sue, planted it about 16 years ago. She says they had to call the nursery back when it was a wee little thing.

“There were no blooms or anything. This went on about 3 years or so,” Sue said.

The nursery asked if some of the branches had thorns. If so, it was a graft, and they should cut it off, she said.

“There wasn’t hardly any tree left,” Jim, who is retired from the U.S. Postal Service in Port Arthur, said.

Then the waist-high nub began to produce until it got higher than their Port Neches home’s roof line. The couple awaits October as harvest month.

“It started producing the very next year. You see what it is now,” Sue said. “They are so good and sweet.”

It takes a ladder to get to the top, but worth the climb, Jim said. He squeezes enough juice to freeze in Mason jars that carry them through seasons of breakfasts. While he may be master of the bush, he points to Sue as queen of the detailed garden menagerie in the front yard.

Butterflies, a swinging gnome, a fountain fashioned from fish plates and colorful foliage creates a fantasy for the eyes. The couple enjoys mornings here in the summer, and in the back come fall.

Jim admits he’d rather be fishing, and who wouldn’t with L.D. Eaves in the family. This brother-in-law from Center is the man they call Catfish King.

There’s one more thing that catches his fancy. Dozens of caps hang from cup hooks screwed into his garage ceiling. One row is “nothing but I Beat Bob West” caps, Kasper boasted.

To nominate a Senior on the Go, call Darragh Doiron at 721-2430.