Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [53]
When I finished talking, Bill, between huffs, replied, “I knew that already.” He was huffing because we were busy running through our own gauntlet of oat sheaves in the attempt to finish while we could still see.
We didn’t make it. The last two rows of shocks we did in the dark. They might as well have been put up by blind men.
In the few free hours a week that were allotted him, Bill scrambled to get a tomato patch going. Tomatoes, if timed well to demand, could be quite profitable.
At last they began to ripen. I wanted to give him all the help I could, so I joined him and Grace picking. With no small exhilaration we burrowed into the vines, filling bucket upon bucket. A steady breeze cooled us. Tall rows of plants acted as dividers channeling the air in our direction.
“Out in the fresh air, seeing the fruits of our labors,” exclaimed Grace. “Before it gets warm,” she added.
“I got three buckets just in the first third of a row,” Bill gushed. “Whew!”
“Grace and I got seven in our first third!” I returned. “How much they payin’ you a bucket?”
“Ten dollars.”
“A rich man in our midst,” boomed a deeper voice—Edward’s—as he happened by.
The tomatoes broke from the plants with a delicious crunch. So plump were they, many had become inextricably trapped between stake and vine, or vine and branch, and exploded when we tried to loosen them.
It took an entire box wagon to haul them over to the community produce distributor.
After lunch the distributor stopped in with some news. He looked grim. Bill’s tomatoes were overripe, he explained. None of the buyers wanted them.
What Bill didn’t know was that wholesale tomatoes have to be picked at the pink stage. He had waited until they were red. But by the time his patch had produced enough pink ones to make a load again, the price had dropped by half. I wasn’t sure why Edward hadn’t bothered to inform Bill of any of this, but I did know Ed was a firm believer in paying for one’s own mistakes.
I next found Grace in the barnyard bearing an armload of leftover ripe tomatoes.
“You know what Bill’s been doing with these?” she cried, creases deepening from the corners of her mouth.
“Throwing them over the fence?”
“No! Squashing them with his feet.”
When Edward marched by, she had to act fast. “I need you to help with the tomatoes,” she said brusquely. There was a hardness to her voice implying an “or else.” Clearly she had gone through this routine before.
“O woe!” Edward moaned, wincing. He couldn’t let her off too easy, so he hammed up the slight to his dignity. Soon he was beside me gathering Bill’s rejected tomatoes from a table in the wood shop. Their destiny was the big kettle in the wash house. Edward began to wash them. But he was taking them one at a time, scrubbing them like potatoes. Huh? Hadn’t he seen Grace just now dump a dozen in a bowl of water, give it a little slosh, and empty it again?
Next came slicing. I did what Grace had showed me: a few quick slashes and into the next bowl.
“Aren’t you going to cut out the scars?” Edward asked.
“Grace told me it didn’t matter.”
“Grace!” he wailed over to the next room. “Don’t you want us to cut out the scars?”
“No,” came the voice. “They come out through the grinder with the pulp.”
“That’s not fair,” he whimpered. “You told Eric an easier way.”
In his forties and as ignorant as Bill about tomatoes? I got it. He was playing dumb!
But the strategy backfired. I wasn’t really listening to what was said next until Grace’s voice began to pierce the air like a needle: “I don’t understand where you come from saying it’s my responsibility to take care of the whole garden without any help from anyone else. Name one other woman in this community who has to do that.” I turned to look at her and as quickly turned away. Her face had gone white and the veins stood