In Praise of Tomatoes

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can't eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as 'progress', doesn't spread.
Andy Rooney

Is there any single thing in this world better than the taste of a homegrown summer tomato? The most perfect ones are slightly sweet at first taste and then follow with a wash of wonderful acidity. You can't find them in the grocery store; no hydroponic outfit can produce them. They only come from somebody's back yard, from some patch of pasture reclaimed, tilled, fertilized with cow manure, and carefully defended from marauding white tails.

One of my dad's friends brought him a sack of tomatoes from his garden. For those of you who have never been privileged enough to live out here in the sticks, you may be unfamiliar with this ritual. Mississippi gardeners frequently have "eyes that overload their stomachs", and instead of planting two or three tomato plants or a couple of cucumber vines, they suddenly have a half acre of producing plants and far more produce than any family of ten could consume.

A famous example of this from my own family involves my grandfather's predilection for watermelons. Every summer, even after the raccoons and deer took their share, we were always hauling melons to friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. We did draw the line at leaving them on doorsteps like abandoned infants, but just barely.

Sometimes people sort of wander around their communities with the abundance of their gardens in the backs of their cars and veggie swaps occur. A husband leaves for work with sacks of collards and comes home with a sack of tomatoes or okra he was pressed to take in exchange. The riches are divvied up among immediate family members and extended families and everyone enjoys.

There's a sort of desperation for the biggest gardeners. They frantically fling bags of vegetables and fruit at any passersby as their gardens quietly produce more and more. It can get to be a little sci-fi after awhile.

The excess bounty often appears in the parking lots of Wal-Mart in the back of people's pickup trucks. You can buy Smith County Watermelons (no, I'm not sure why their being Smith County Watermelons makes them more attractive), peaches, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes from people sitting in folding lawn chairs for a pittance. The better the produce year, the more weekend merchants appear until it's almost like an impromptu farmers' market outside and shoppers sneer in contempt as they pass the pale, mealy tomato poseurs and tiny watermelons inside.

The sack of tomatoes my father's coworker sent were the very best type: rich, red, firm, juicy, acidic, and small enough to be eaten by one person. These summer tomatoes never need the assistance of any form of dressing. In fact, salad dressing would be an insult to the process of soil, sun, and hand labor that produced them. They are slicers, begging to be quartered, salted lightly, and devoured. One can eat them like apples while luscious juices drip from the chin. It becomes a hedonistic celebration that involves finger licking and a garden hose to clean up afterwards.

Summer is also the only time you can get green tomatoes. There have been times when I was abroad in the summer that just the thought of green tomatoes, sliced and fried, has made me discontent with all other dishes available. In Japan, I had my own little tomato plant out on my tiny balcony just so I could have fried green tomatoes.

These perfect summer tomatoes don't last long. Perhaps the very ephemerality of them is part of the flavor. Soon, the bearing season will be over, the plants will be tilled under to enhance the soil, and all of us will have to settle for whatever poor cousins might appear in the produce department. Until then, I'll enjoy every messy, delectable bite.