Our memories from childhood are the things that often resurface when we get older. I have a vivid memory of biting into a fresh tomato, still warm from being on the vine in the garden and the juice running down my face onto the front of my top. Then, of course, I added salt to the ripened red fruit. Disclaimer—scientifically a tomato is a fruit; to me it’s still a vegetable. And there was nothing better tasting to me. I have not found a tomato to match that taste in several decades.
The problem is that in my memory nothing can match that atmosphere of sitting on the front porch and eating tomatoes.
Unless it was sitting on the porch and eating watermelon. Now that was really a treat. My grandparents didn’t grow watermelons. They were smart and admitted their limitations. Grandmother was magic in the garden, but she never mastered watermelons. Truth be told, it took a certain soil to raise good watermelons.
At any rate, Granddaddy usually was the picker. After looking over a truckload of melons and thumping and looking at the field spot (you know, that flattened yellow spot where the melon sat and grew, soaking up moisture and sunshine slowly, getting sweeter and juicer each day) he would commit to a purchase. Then, after a trip home, the melon got rolled under the bed on the linoleum in the coolest room and left there for at least a day to be as cool as possible before cutting.
Sadly, most melons and tomatoes today don’t taste as good as they used to. I think that’s due to memories setting the goal so high, but also to the rush. Farmers are rushed to get produce to market. And you know what happens when you mess with (rush) Mother Nature.
One of my girls is going to have a raised garden next year. It will be hard, hot work, but she’s excited to get to it. I know my grandmother will be there in spirit, cheering her on.
“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
-Annie Proulx