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He won many awards including the National Headliners Club award for writing the best local interest column in the country in 1962. In 1977 his fellow Tri-State Journalists honored him with with the first Distinguished Service Award. He is the author of five book: A Pig In The Gray Panel Truck, A Dandelion in Winter, Day of a President, Just a 100 Miles From Home, and The Journey in the Red Jalopy. He worked for newspapers in Santa Fe, N.M., Monett, MO, Beckley WV, and Memphis, TN. He began working for the Evansville Courier in 1957. Aaron was born in Cone, Texas and reared on a farm in Portales, NM. He
attented the University of New Mexico where he graduated with honors with a
degree in journalism.
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by Joe Aaron It was on the twenty second day of July, in the year of our Lord 1986, that I picked the first ripe tomato from my garden. It was at 3:18 o’clock in the afternoon. The temperature was 86, the humidity correspondingly low for the time and place.
It is of that event that I wish to speak today, with no more boastfulness than would be meet and fitting on such an occasion.
It was not, of course, the first ripe tomato harvested this season from a Tri-State garden, and I make no such claim. It was never intended to be. Not first but best has long been my motto.
It PROBABLY WAS not even the 10,000th ripe tomato, if I am to believe the stories told me from my right and from my left.
I have even had gardeners, who are akin to fishermen in some respects, tell me their first ripe tomatoes of 1986 were picked on Nov. 3, 1985.
You can believe as much of that as you can stand.
But this first ripe tomato of which I speak was MY first ripe tomato.
With my own native cunning and agricultural knowhow I raised it, as we say, from a pup, and coddled it and babied it, and fretted over it when hail battered it one memorable evening in May, so that I worried myself about half silly.
Actually, I had three tomatoes to ripen on the same July day, and it was my intent to make an appropriate ceremony of their harvest.
I was to pick one—the first one, of course, since I am the man of the household and thus entitled to some primal consideration—Bernice was to pick one and Mom, who is visiting us from Arizona, was to pick one.
I even thought about taking pictures.
I triumphantly picked my tomato and took it into the house, showed it to them with a certain showmanship and told them of the great honor that awaited them.
THEY REACTED phlegmatically. I can think of no better word, and it gives me the added satisfaction of using “phlegmatically” for the first time in my life.
Bernice said she was fixing supper and would go out later and pick hers.
Mom was alternately watching a television show and nodding drowsily in her chair and said she’d go out after supper.
I tell you that when you plan a ceremony, it is best to leave the women folks out of it, because they will just hurt your feelings. I’m not sure they even have the knack for celebration.
Well sir, in something of a minor snit—I may as well confess it; I am snit-bitten once in awhile—I took my first ripe tomato in one hand and the forbidden salt shaker in the other. I am not supposed even to look at a salt shaker; even glance at one, much less use its contents.
And I went out into my back yard.
Bending slightly forward to avoid spurts of tomato juice on my clean shirt, I bit into my first ripe tomato, then salted the next bite and ate it, then salted the next bite and–well, in like manner until I had taken it down to the stem.
NOW—AND I DON’T quite know how to say this without seeming boastful, and yet it must be said in the interest of journalistic completeness—it was the best tomato I have ever eaten.
It was juicy yet firm, and mildly tart, the way a proper tomato is supposed to be, and it still held the warmth of the afternoon sun.
I wish to state that Walter Hart of Boonville grows excellent tomatoes. I have tested a generous sampling from his garden and speak authoritatively.
Orville and Clarice June Hale, just down the street from us, raise tomatoes that are a pleasure to the tongue. And rhubarb too, for that matter. And zucchini. I have sampled them all, and hope to again in summertimes to come.
And the tomato crop from Bob Ellis’ garden, among the first each year to ripen in Boonville, has a quality that is ambrosial. And you ought to see his cabbage, which goes absolutely berserk, with heads almost as large as a basketball.
And yet . . . and yet . . . How can I say this and not appear to be preening?
The unavoidable fact is, the ripe tomato I picked from my own garden, and ate down to the stem on the afternoon of July 22, 1986, was the very finest tomato of them all.
If I had thought and saved you a bite, you certainly would have agreed.
BUT WHO THINKS to save a bite when he is eating his first ripe tomato of the year?
It is my pleasure to report that we have a great many tomatoes—perhaps enough to refer to them as a “slew,” and easily qualifying as “scads”—coming on, and when we have eaten our fill of ripe ones, we will eat them green and fried, which is no slight delight itself.
The eggplant is in full production, the banana peppers too, and the broccoli, though it took its own sweet time.
I have concern—and not just your ordinary concern; deep concern—about the beans and the okra.
The beans—and don’t ask me to explain this because it’s a long story—are maturing about two at a time, so that we pick them and store them in the crisper.
We estimate we will have a full mess of them by Labor Day, but that may be optimistic.
And the okra—well, I don’t even want to talk about the okra. It just stands there, robust as a redwood, and does nothing. The blooms won’t even open. Somebody explain that, if you please.
But nobody can take away that first ripe tomato. It’s just about all the triumph I can stand in one helping, anyway.
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“It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.”—Lewis Grizzard
