Tomatoes on My Mind

                                      

        

         Lately, I’ve been thinking about tomatoes. Not just any tomatoes, the tomatoes I cannot get out of my mind were grown in the backyard gardens of Dayton Ohio during the post war Augusts of my childhood.

         Those were the summers before air conditioners when the house could get so hot candles might melt in their holders. The air was so heavy with humidity it weighed us down, making any kind of movement seem like an ordeal.  Ice cubes couldn’t be produced quickly enough to keep up with demand for iced tea and lemonade.

         Incredibly hot walks to a corner grocery store were endured for the promise of an ice-cold coke.  The price of a coke was a nickel which included leaning deep inside a giant cooler to retrieve one buried beneath mounds of precious ice.

         Those were Augusts so hot we slept outside on the porch. So hot crimes were committed over ownership of a fan. So hot all we could think of was those tomatoes ripening in the back yard. They were our reward. Huge, red, juicy and, if I may brag, utterly delicious. Those luscious specimens needed to be eaten fresh off the vine to be at their moment of magnificence.

          

         It was so hot I might be excused from chores. Grass blessedly was too burnt to cut, weeding was forgotten and garages went uncleaned.

         I might even have heard my mother say something as sweet as “Your room is an absolute mess but it’s too hot to clean right now. You will do it as soon as it cools down, right?”

         “Oh, yes, Mama, yes.”

         One job that wasn’t ignored was watering the garden. The sprinkler might be set up not only to save the lawn but also to allow every one a chance to play and cool off.

         Watering included the tomatoes of course. 

         Afternoons, I could sit under the biggest tree in our back yard, the one that provided enough real shade to keep the grass green and soft enough to lounge on. This is where I would while away hours reading the Black Stallion or Betsy Tacy stories.  It was the perfect place to count ants and peek at the tomatoes ripening. There were so many, it was okay to eat one whole with the saltcellar snatched off the kitchen table. Or a tomato and butter sandwich could easily be whipped up.

         A famous chef once said that if he could pick only one superb thing to eat it would be buttered bread. I would agree if you put some Ohio tomato slices on that with a little salt. .

         As suppertime neared, my mother would call me to pick a really ripe tomato or two for dinner. I would leap at that job. I knew tomatoes. As a toddler, I am told; I took a bite out of each tomato in my Grandpa’s Victory Garden as it reached the peak of ripening. Grandpa thought he had a raccoon attacking all his best tomatoes but it was just me, already a tomato connoisseur at age two.

        

         Those tomatoes were served at every meal in August. Daddy didn’t object to sandwich suppers as long as it was bacon lettuce and tomato. Mama might serve fried chicken, maybe not, maybe boiled ham or potato salad but whatever it was there always were red juicy tomato slices with just a little salt.

         Evenings were spent outside where a breeze might turn up. Sitting in the backyard swing, we would gaze at the stars and try to remember the names Grandpa had taught us. A television program had to be extremely good to entice us to re enter the overheated house. Instead we played shadow games and listened to stories and gossip. 

         During those evenings the acid sweet odor of the growing tomatoes was in the air, and, I swear, I could hear them ripening.