Kokomo Kootsie

5/22/2002

Nibbles- Bits & Pieces

Big Red Ripe Tomatoes
My grandma always had a vegetable garden, and worked industriously in it, keeping it weed free and well watered in dry spells.

All the folks we knew had yards, and almost everyone in those days raised as much vegetables as they could and canned them, along with fruit from their trees for winter use. They used their gardens all season. People were looked upon as lazy, if they did not try to raise what they ate. Many had chicken runs too; for the eggs and for fried chicken and a capon, or big fat hen, for Thanksgiving or Christmas. There were always fruit trees and grape arbors in most back yards.

Every year, my grandmother would keep an eagle-eye out for any sign of the first ripening tomato. She’d plan on that big tomato, or even two, for a Sunday dinner!

Grandma was not the only one keeping an eye on that first tomato. I watched for it to become just red enough! Then when I knew it was ripe, and would be plucked up for Sunday dinner, I’d get a salt shaker from the kitchen; go to the garden when I had a chance, and pick grandma’s tomato! Then I’d find a private spot to eat it. Nothing ever tasted so good!

I remember once, walking all that way down the road, when I lived in the country, to an old cemetery, high above the banks of the old Wildcat Creek, and my best friend, and I, who lived just beyond the cemetery, would lay on our backs in the tall soft grass, and eat the tomatoes, (in the country, there’d be more than one, ‘first ripe’ tomato to pick).

We would look up at the fleeced lined clouds, and wondered about God and heaven; what it would be like; we’d wonder what we would be doing years away—who we would marry, if we would have children, what they would look like.

The sun would be warm on us, and the sweet summer time smell of the grass, the earth, and myriad of new growth would permeate the air. An occasional, somehow lonely call of a bird, that sounded like ‘pea-ah-wee’ would waft over the soft breeze, repeatedly.

A kind of sadness, along with the care-free hour, would sort of mix in together, and fill my whole being with a longing, for I knew not what; the sun would become less bright, for a split second; then it was all over and gone as suddenly as it came, and I’d lay there and wonder about it. Then we would be laughing and talking again as though it hadn’t happened.

All this from a stolen red tomato on a beautiful summer day!
EPM

LINK

| EPM 2002 - 2005 |

Archives |