The Summer of Stolen Tomatoes

Welcome to the Member Ideas area! This community feature is where our members can post their own ideas. These posts are unedited and not necessarily endorsed by the National Gardening Association.
Posted by @Sharon on
They were only little tomato plants, each no more than two or three inches tall. I carefully dug two of them from the family garden and transplanted them to my own private garden hidden behind the playhouse. After all, who would ever miss two little tomato plants?

I never was very hungry as a child.  Most of the time my mother had to spend the dinner hour reminding me to eat. And I ate what they placed in front of me, a bite at a time; one bean, two beans, three beans, four. I was much more interested in the conversation floating above my head than I was in eating. By the time dinner was over, I might have eaten six or eight bites.2012-06-12/Sharon/acc439

They tell me I had favorites, favoring one food over another for seasons at a time.  I remember the winter of shucky beans, those dried green beans that I'd helped Granny Ninna and Aunt Bett carefully thread onto cotton twine and hang from rafters till they dried and rattled like skeletons in the breeze. One summer it was green apples straight from the old apple tree in the back yard, fresh off the tree, fried in pastry, simmered in butter and cinnamon, cooked till they were mush, baked in a pie; it didn't really matter as long as they were apples.  The problem with that was that I ate nothing else, only the one particular food of the moment or the season.

I got by with this until the summer after my second grade year when the school doctor, who was determined to give all of us typhoid shots, told my mother, the principal, that since I had not reached the standard weight of a normal going-into-third-grade child, nor did my head reach anybody's elbow, she might try feeding me more.  My mother, a very dignified woman who did no wrong, was highly offended by the idea that anyone thought she had an underfed child and strongly suggested I might do as the doctor ordered if I wanted to enter third grade.

I had just discovered tomatoes the summer before and since everybody was so pleased that I would now eat a slice of tomato, and since every grown up around me ate several slices of tomato at a time, and since all those grown ups were much bigger than I was, I thought it might be the one thing that would help me grow so that I could enter third grade.  I would eat lots of tomatoes.2012-06-12/Sharon/ba32ac

I stole two tomato plants.  Straight out of the garden.

I had helped plant those tomato seeds and I had helped weed them. I figured I had some ownership. I took the two little tomato plants and very gently placed them in holes I'd dug just for them. 

I had a playhouse of my very own. It was made of cedar logs, had a front door, a side door, two windows and a little porch with a rail on two sides. It had been built by my grandfather for my dad's two younger sisters and since they were all grown up, and since we had come to live with Granny Ninna, the playhouse was all mine. It sat on the bank and overlooked the creek that came from a spring high up the mountain behind our house. It also overlooked the lower flower garden, the one full of Mom's perennials, mostly tall red bee balm.  She mostly ignored that garden because it grew well without her.

I'd cleared a little spot between the flowers and the creek because I knew if the bee balm grew so well there, so would my tomatoes. They both needed sunshine and there would be water for them from the creek. I also knew tomatoes had to be staked, so while the dirt around them was soft from my digging, I added limbs from a tree around each plant. I tied old red hair ribbons around the stakes, hoping they'd hold the tomatoes up as they grew, just like we did in the garden. I also knew that the red of the bee balm and the red of the ribbons would hide the soon to be red tomatoes.  I watered them well, giving them a drink from the creek.

I was determined to grow that summer, to live up to my mother's expectations and go into third grade, and my now favorite tomatoes were going to help me. I don't remember what I ate while waiting for the tomatoes, probably just enough to tide me over till they were ripe enough to eat.

One morning I remember Ninna mentioning that she thought rabbits had eaten two of her prized tomato plants; I squirmed a little when Aunt Bett said that she didn't reckon rabbits ate tomato plants, but I never said a word.  Even when they talked about the seeds they'd borrowed from Uncle Dock, and how he was expecting them to save more to give back to him, I never said a word. And when they said they might need to fence in the tomato patch and Dad uttered an angry word or two, I still said nothing.2012-06-12/Sharon/f7f293

My tomatoes grew and grew. First I had one then two then I started playing in the playhouse from early morning till they called me in for dinner, eating tomatoes all day long. There were so many tomatoes on those two plants I stuffed myself every single day and there were some left over. I wondered what I'd do with all the tomatoes I couldn't eat. I had them for breakfast, for a morning snack. I took them on my trips up the mountains and nibbled them again all afternoon. I'd been told to never waste food and looked around for a mountain critter to share my tomatoes with, but I had no company and I couldn't very well carry my stolen tomatoes into the house with everybody watching.

There was an old man who lived down the holler from us. He walked past my playhouse every morning and every evening taking his cow to and from pasture. One morning as he walked past, I quietly asked him if he liked tomatoes. He declared that he loved tomatoes. That evening I had a brown paper bag of tomatoes waiting for him.  One day soon after, he stopped by to talk to my mother who was working in her flowers near the road. I heard him thank her for the tomatoes, saying they were the best eating tomatoes he'd had in years. Later that evening she told Ninna and Aunt Bett about the tomato man and asked who had shared tomatoes with him. I kept my head down and nibbled on a bean or two. I never said a word. Aunt Bett and Ninna said they didn't know where he got the tomatoes but I could feel their eyes on me and I hoped my hair covered my face that was surely as red as any tomato.

I mostly ate those tomatoes like apples, straight off the vine, taking a bite out of them and admiring the tart flavor and the shiny red beauty, the juice that dribbled down my chin, but one day I sneaked a paring knife from the kitchen drawer and an old newspaper from Dad's stash beside his chair and I set about saving some seeds from several of those tomatoes. I was going to give them to Uncle Dock and maybe save a few for Ninna to make up next year for those I had stolen. I had been told that they were special tomatoes, handed down through our family for generations. The seeds were highly sought and when one relative ran out of seeds, the rest of the family shared.2012-06-12/Sharon/b3ffa6

I was chided and threatened by my mother that summer, she declared that I wasn't eating enough and that I wasn't growing. She said she hated that I'd have to repeat second grade, but it was going to happen if I didn't grow. Aunt Bett told her for sure that even if I wasn't growing, I wasn't un-growing either, so she thought maybe my mother was worried about nothing. I'd eaten so many tomatoes I felt a little like a tomato myself, but nobody else seemed to notice.

In the fall I took my dried tomato seeds to Aunt Bett and told her when she next saw Uncle Dock to please give them to him. She asked if Ninna had saved them and I told her they were seeds I'd saved myself from tomatoes I hadn't eaten. She didn't question me, and I said no more, but she had that look in her eye that told me she knew more than I thought she knew about some things.

School started and I entered third grade no bigger than I had left second, but nobody mentioned it. I really had tried to grow, had stuffed myself with tomatoes all summer long but it hadn't worked out the way I'd planned. I had taken up a life of theft and crime all for nothing.  I ate my last juicy red tomato and carefully chopped up the withered plants that were still hiding behind the bee balm. I buried them along with a withered tomato or two that I'd missed, right beside the creek. That was the end of my stolen tomato summer, I thought.

Until the next spring when one morning I found Aunt Bett standing near the creek right below my playhouse; she was looking down at some plants that were very small, plants that were growing behind the bee balm beside the creek, plants that looked suspiciously like tomatoes.

"Well, looky here, looky here," she said when she saw me, her blue eyes twinkling just like they did every time she caught me doing something I probably would have been better off not doing, "you remember those rabbits that stole your Ninna's two tomato plants last summer?  I do believe they must have dropped them right here behind the bee balm. See, they're growing here next to your playhouse!  You'll have tomatoes all summer long."

And so I did.

Again.

~*~

My tomatoes were what we now call heirloom tomatoes. An heirloom tomato is an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) heirloom cultivar of tomato. Heirloom tomatoes have become increasingly popular and more readily available in recent years, though true heirlooms are those that come from seeds handed down from generation to generation since around 1940. They are grown now for historical interest, access to wider varieties, and by people who wish to save seeds from year to year. They are by far the best tasting of all tomatoes. I was fortunate to have grown up eating them.

You can read more about heirloom tomatoes right here.

All images in this article are from the ATP Plant Database. Please scroll over each image for a description and the name of the contributor.

 
Comments and Discussion
Thread Title Last Reply Replies
Now I'm craving a tomato sandwich! by plantladylin Sep 18, 2015 3:22 PM 15
Tomatoes by vic Jul 1, 2012 8:51 AM 75
tomatoes by kardon Jun 25, 2012 8:19 PM 1
What a great story! by BookerC1 Jun 21, 2012 9:05 AM 7
tomatoes by joannmallory3 Jun 20, 2012 9:58 PM 5
That was fun, Sharon! by crittergarden Jun 20, 2012 9:34 PM 5
Untitled by SCButtercup Jun 20, 2012 7:22 AM 1
wonderful! by Dutchlady1 Jun 19, 2012 9:27 PM 4
Tomato Sandwich by CDsSister Jun 19, 2012 9:07 PM 5

Explore More:

Member Login:

( No account? Join now! )

Today's site banner is by Zoia and is called "Volunteer"

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.