Tomatoes

Today is Tomato Day at the Carrboro Farmers Market. This essay was published in the "Tomato" issue of the Carrboro Free Press on July 8, 2009.

Overheard at the Carrboro Farmer’s Market, mother to silent daughter: “The ugliest tomatoes are actually the ones that taste the best.” I wondered if this one-way conversation would take the obvious metaphorical turn, but it stayed straight on message. “Mommy is very picky about her tomatoes,” she continued as she examined a promising German Johnson.

Except for recognizing the inherent superiority of the home-grown varieties, I can’t claim to have ever been that picky about my tomatoes. Since I grew up in rural East Texas, my husband, bred in Charlotte, finds this to be curious.

Trips to the farmer’s market with Paul in high summer are quests for the ugliest, tastiest tomatoes. In reaction to the acidy Burpee’s Big Boys that he remembers from his father’s backyard garden, he’s after sweetness, with enough texture to stand up to the heat of the stovetop. Pink Girls, Cherokee Purples, all manner of lyrical names will join the reliable German Johnsons in soups and gumbos and biryanis and jamablayas of his own invention.

Assembling the tomatoes with other seasonal picks from the market, he’ll jump from cookbook to internet recipe to suggestions from his “tweeple” till he finds the magical combination of ingredients. He’ll put our son Tucker to work at the chopping board, encouraging all kinds of proper habits, not to mention the love of a good meal carefully prepared.

At 16, Tucker is ripe for embarrassment, though that’s not my aim in sharing the story behind one of his best works of art. Preschool age being the high point of abstract expressionism for so many, the daycare years brought out a talent in Tucker that he has since let languish.

On construction paper washed in pink he painted a fury of reds and greens, with a red center of gravity, random spokes of the red and green contributing energy and intensity. This creation of our young Jackson Pollock ended up on the coffee table next to a New York Times Sunday Magazine. The magazine happened to have a picture of a tomato splattered on its otherwise stark white cover. Tucker looked at the two, pointed to his own, and proclaimed, “Tomato!”

The topic of the cover story was politics: the Gingrich Revolution of 1994, symbolized by an iconic image of the tomato as hand grenade. Out of the mouths of babes, though. With that pleasurable cry of discovery—Tomato!—political symbol was reduced to its literal essence, while the abstract was translated into a piercing reality, a bright red tomato so juicy it could not be contained. Home grown, to be sure.

A blog deferred

As I think about it, I wonder how I kept it up at such a full tilt for so long--more than four years. Lately I've had a lot of help from my friend and colleague Al Brophy. Many thanks, Al! And thanks to all of you GreeneSpace readers. I've made new friends, learned a lot, and all in all had a great little run.

But after going on three months of silence, I had better admit the obvious.

A blog deferred does not explode.
It sighs and folds.

Paul Jones in the News Again

Some time ago I wrote about Paul Jones the art collector (not Sally's Paul Jones (a.k.a. "The Real Paul Jones")). I wrote about him because many, many years after he was denied admission to the University of Alabama's law school, for no better reason than his race, the University of Alabama gave him an honorary degree. The degree was not so much to make amends but in honor of his accomplishments as an art collector.

Dr. Jones has a long history with Alabama--while an official in President Nixon's education department, he awarded a multi-million dollar grant for extension education to the University of Alabama; and more recently he has donated a significant part of his art collection to the University. This is yet more evidence of the ways that, over the course of a lifetime, things change. It reminds me of a story Dr. Jones told me of his childhood growing up in Bessemer, Alabama. He sometimes went with his parents to the Bright Star--a legendary restaurant that's still in operation in Bessemer. I highly recommend it next time you're in Birmingham. Because those were the days of Jim Crow, Jones' family could not go in the front door--but the proprietor would set up a table in the back and the Jones came in the back door. That was a courageous position for the restaurant in those days, I am reliably informed.

Some years ago I asked Dr. Jones whether he'd been back. And he said "yes. It's still a great restaurant. [Pause] And this time I went in the front door!" Ah, what changes he's witnessed over his lifetime--and what changes he's been a part of, and contributed to as well. It's an important lesson of foregiveness and of moving forward. As we say in the historical memory business, we are far too often burdened by memory.

So you can imagine my surprise when a reader of Greenespace wrote me recently to tell me about another recent story in which Paul Jones figured. During the 1972 presidential election, Dr. Jones was in charge of President Nixon's campaign to get out the black vote. In that capacity he approached Sammy Davis, Jr. Amidst the recent talk of the release of Nixon tapes, there's a story about a letter that Paul Jones wrote about his meeting with Davis. The Orange County Recorder reports:

Campaign workers talked to Davis about supporting Nixon in January 1972. "The entertainer's reaction was that he has not chosen sides and is 'hanging loose,'" said a memo sent that month by campaign staffer Paul Jones to the re-election committee. "He indicated wanting to see 'what is in it' – which was spelled out to mean something 'for the people' – not for himself."

Another example of the unexpected outdoing itself in its power to surprise, as Ralph Ellison said!