I was on the front porch when you drove by and I waved, thankful for blue peaceful skies above.
But on this day in 1940, the skies over London rattled with gunfire as German fighter aircraft were shot down in the Battle of Britain, a failed attempt by Hitler to obliterate the Royal Air Force in preparation for the German army’s long awaited invasion of England, which makes you wonder --- what does an army do in August while waiting to invade a country --- grill out?
And suddenly you’re thinking charcoal grilled hamburgers, with home-grown tomatoes and veggies picked from a local garden.
I grew up in a farming family and in those days, you planted a garden because it was essential to your life. You never, ever, considered living without a garden. If an elderly person announced, say in early April, they were not going to put in a garden that year, you realized their earthly time was near an end and the tribe watched as that elder walked slowly, alone, deep into the woods with a deer hide blanket and a skin of water.
Each January while snow blew outside, opening the pages of a seed catalogue seemed to produce warmth. A mental thaw would occur, releasing trickles of memories from gardens past --- cantaloupes the size of bowling balls, green cucumbers, orange carrots, and Big Beef tomatoes. For your part, the coming gardening year was a wonderful fantasy, because every gardener knows that God (the first gardener) and weather decide how your garden will actually turn out. And aphids, aphids decide a lot about it too.
By May 1, 15 little tomato plants in sawed-off milk cartons covered our back-porch picnic table. My father would crank up the red Farmall Super A tractor and plow a half-acre of black rich soil. I walked behind him busting up big clogs until the land was tilled to my mother’s satisfaction. Then, come the first warm sunny day in May, my mother and father would look at each other over coffee and eggs and nod. It was G-Day.
And so, we planted the Garden.
But by July you’d begin to suspect you’d put something in motion that was getting out of hand.
The garden produced a rolling tsunami of produce. The pressure cooker was running a full load of steam practically 24 hours a day, the kitchen resembled a submarine boiler room, and my mother’s hair appeared permanently melted to her head from heat.
My uncle’s country store, Hudson’s Clover Farm, would run out of Ball canning jars, causing community-wide panic, while vegetables continued to find their way into the house.
Early morning and you reach for your toothbrush and pick up a cucumber! Lift up the newspaper by the recliner and underneath find three zucchini --- they weren’t there an hour ago! Squash came through the door like relatives. At night the beds were checked for okra. You’d fall off to sleep and dream of cantaloupe vines wrapping around your throat, big 65-pound behemoths.
Back in March you’d trade a plow horse for a tomato, but by July, people placed bagsful on the hood of your car while you were in church service.
Nevertheless, what I loved most were the tomatoes.
Thankfully, there is an excellent crop this year, like the tomatoes of our youth, pulled off the vine and eaten with juice running down our hands and chins. Bite into a homegrown tomato and your soul tastes contentment.
And right now, the skies are clear, I’ve burgers on the grill, and I need to go slice a tomato. We’ll talk more, later. You stay healthy.
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August 16, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Column: Contentment tastes like a tomato | Local News - Statesville Record & Landmark
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Tomato
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