RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THE RIPE TOTMATO: GOD'S GIFT TO TASTE BUDS

If anyone was thinking about becoming a vegetarian, mid-July in Missouri would be a good time to start. Gardens are reaching their peaks. Roadside stands are popping up with fresh goodies at a reasonable price.

The country probably already has enough laws and regulations to last for eternity. Goodness knows, this nation needs less government interference, not more. But before the door slams shut on Congress (otherwise known as New Laws Made Here -- For a Price) there should be one more -- just a tiny one -- adopted, signed and enacted.

It's like this. You drive down a pleasant highway on a glorious July Sunday afternoon and an alarm goes off inside your head. Because your eyesight is so poor you can't see for long distances, it takes a moment to realize your brain already has recognized a "Home-grown tomatoes" sign nearly a mile and half down the road.

Serendipity. This isn't going to be just a nice Sunday outing after all. It has the potential to be a brass-band-and-rockets-red-glare day, one to remember for a while.

Most folks probably don't get this excited over the thought of tasting the first home-grown tomatoes of the season. As a matter of fact, there are actually some questionable characters who call themselves red-blooded Americans who don't like tomatoes at all. Can you imagine that?

But if you are one of those millions of farm-raised, garden-hoeing, weed-pulling, bean-picking Americans who no longer has a garden, the "Home-grown tomatoes" sign is akin to the first glimpse of Penelope that Ulysses had when he got back from his summer vacation.

So you wheel the car into the tight parking lot of a ramshackle shed passing itself off as a vegetable market. In the dim shade you see the red globes, succulent with seedy juice, resting on a table. You start bagging as fast as you can. It takes a while for your eyes to focus on cucumbers, okra, peppers, football-sized baking potatoes and other vegetables fresh from somebody's garden. Somebody with a home, you hope.

The next night's dinner is entirely vegetables: Sliced tomatoes, okra and sweet corn that looks like it was painted by a Renaissance artist it is so perfect. The first bite of corn is like tasting sugar after a two-year diet. The okra begs to be moaned over. And the tomatoes --

Suckered again. The "home" where these "home-grown tomatoes" came from must have been in Nicaragua. Then you remember why it's better to look for a "Vine-ripened tomatoes" sign.

There is a contract implied in a sign that says "Home-grown tomatoes." It is a binding document that promises to deliver tomatoes just like the ones you ate from the garden at your home when you were young, served with generous portions of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans (also from the garden), pickled beets, bread-and-butter pickles, corn on the cob and hot yeast rolls, all accompanied by fresh-brewed iced tea that was sweetened with real sugar while it was still boiling.

These tomatoes, the ones from the Sunday drive, couldn't even conjure up a good bologna sandwich.

So if Newt Gingrich and those other reformers want to balance the budget, limit government, cut taxes, preserve Social Security and make this country safe for another century, that's just fine.

But before they go home, please pass a law that says anyone who puts a "Home-grown tomatoes" sign on hothouse imitations will be forced to eat them every day for life. Is that too much to ask?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.