TOMATO TRADITION REMAINS INTACT

Sliced tomatoes, green beans, roasting ears, new potatoes, sliced cucumbers, green onions, fried apples, fried ham, cornbread, cellar-cooled milk and butter, dewberry cobbler. That was our early century summer fare, all home produced. Did we eat well, or what?

Modernists may say, "Well, you could have omitted the butter, and in what shortening did you fry the apples and ham? Whole milk? And did you put in any kind of fat to season the green beans? Lard in the cobbler crust?" Picky, picky.

Fanatic modernists may have us down to sliced cucumbers, green onions, steamed green beans and sliced tomatoes. No salt, of course. Well, still not bad. But not good enough to sustain one through an afternoon in the hay fields, at the wheat thresher or working out poll taxes on the roads while the corn was laid by.

The thread that runs so truly through these early summer menus, right down to today is the tomato, crimson jewel of the garden.

Looking back, I seem to remember that we had almost 50 square feet of tomato plants with the resulting bushels and bushels of tomatoes. Many were eaten as they came, right from the vines, whether ripe, or rolled in corn meal and fried when green. Then there were canned tomatoes and all kinds of other tomato things like juice, preserves, relishes, chutney, chow chow, etc.

From these early days forward, I have always, every year, had tomato plants in my garden. Many, at first, then dwindling over the years as the need diminished.

This year, in the spring, I thought I would bring an end to my home-grown tomato saga. I delayed, pondered, fidgeted, and argued with myself. I couldn't spade very deep anymore, but then tomato roots don't go down all the way to China. Home-grown vs. store-bought tomatoes? No contest. After putting up with thick-skinned, tasteless tomatoes all winter, a garden-ripe tomato seems like an altogether different species. I'd have to step up on something to drive the stakes and then suffer soreness all down my hammering side. Squirrels, cutworms, blight, turtles, birds, etc., etc. So went my arguing.

The result of such pros and cons was getting my plants out late. "Now," I sez to myself, "I'll not have a ripe tomato by the Fourth of July," a distinct break with tradition. I hate breaks with traditions.

Making sure to thwart the cutworms, I pushed a nail down beside each plant. Cutworms can't cut through iron. In the ensuing days, I gave my new trowel a good workout. It is beginning to fit my hand. I weeded and "Miracle-Gro-ed." The plants got off to a great start and continued in the same happy vein. Eventually one tomato began to blush and then another and another. Maybe, by the second week in July I estimated. How was I going to defend my tomato reputation, should someone ask. Frost? Weak muscles? Laziness? I sat in the swing and mulled while murders were committed in California, scandals multiplied in D.C., fires blazed out west. And there I sat in my cozy swing, thinking of tomatoes.

On the morning of the Fourth, I went to the tomato patch, and there was a crimson red tomato. Just one. It's hard for me to explain. It had just a medium blush two days before. I picked it off carefully, shifted it from hand to hand, feeling the good weight. Later, I set the table for Fourth of July company, placed the paper flag that comes with the newspaper in the center of the table and placed the whole, show-off tomato right on the center of the flag.

You thought I was going to eat it, didn't you? I did, slice by slice, for supper, after the company was gone and I was feeling so self-satisfied and ebullient.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley of Cape Girardeau is an author and longtime Southeast Missourian columnist.