Homegrown tomatoes,
homegrown tomatoes,
What’d life be without
homegrown tomatoes?
Only two things that money
can’t buy -
That’s true love and
homegrown tomatoes …
-Guy Clark
This time of year, it’s not the U.S. dollar but a different currency that reigns supreme in Arkansas. It circulates widely, is assayed and weighed out by experienced appraisers, and is traded freely with satisfaction guaranteed and good will all around.
In other parts of the country, dinner guests may arrive with flowers in hand, or carrying dessert. But in this bountiful season here in the still Natural State, folks will come through the door carrying a plain brown paper sack, and inside will be treasure-red, pink, green, gold or a mixed palette of all.
Tomatoes! Fresh tomatoes. The first of this year’s crop.
It’s the good old summertime, and the bounty of the land begins to flow toward dinner tables from Texarkana to Jonesboro, Smackover to Cotton Plant.
It’s impossible to write about the return of this annual ritual without the taste buds perking up and a mounting sense of anticipation centered on dinnertime, or maybe just a simple sandwich to tide a body over till then. One that will remind you that simplicity is the essence of the elegant.
All year long we wait, knowing better than to confuse the alleged tomatoes in the supermarket with the real thing. They may look pretty as a picture, but they can taste like one, too. Because they’re made for looking at, not eating. Now is the time to switch to the eating kind, the best kind, the kind worth waiting for.
In these latitudes, we look forward to the first tomatoes of the year the way a Frenchman awaits the first Beaujolais. The early arrivals may not be full-bodied yet but maturing, rosy-hued, pink if held up to the light just right, or maybe bright red if allowed to ripen, a lovely little weight in the hand, arriving like promise itself. And now, as summer arrives, a promise to be fulfilled.
The tomato season in Arkansas officially began with the 57th annual Pink Tomato Festival, which wound up last weekend at the unofficial capital of Tomatoland, USA: Warren, Ark.
There may have been varieties aplenty on display at the tomato festival, but there’s no tomato so distinctive, so local and so awaited during the long, drab winter as -ta-da!-the Bradley County Pink.
You could almost hear the fanfare when the first lug was opened. You knew they’d be as succulent as they are ugly. For the worse they look, the better they taste. That’s the rule of (green) thumb with Bradley County Pinks.
As with books, you can’t tell a tomato by its cover. When it comes to tomatoes, or humans for that matter, appearances can be deceiving.
In another example of Gresham’s Law, which holds that bad currency drives out good, the best of tomatoes now has been reduced to a rarity found only in the backwoods, like bootleg hootch. It says something about how poor in taste this rich country has become that the Bradley County Pink should be almost a secret outside of Arkansas, although tomato aficionados elsewhere may have heard tell of it.
I trust I’m not revealing any state secret when I tell you that a diet of Arkansas tomatoes explains the beauty of our women, the virility of our men, and the wondrous appeal of our children.
All those qualities are brought out, like the first blush of the tomato, only in the fullness of time.
Time is the essence of tomatoes as it is of other good things. Like writing and love.
In these latitudes, the tomato-like barbecue-is a subject on which all have a more than decided opinion, and will express it at the first opportunity, if not before. But no poor words of mine in praise of the love apple can substitute for the first bite of the season.
To take a liberty or two with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, who would surely have written it so if only he had known the first bite of a Bradley County Pink in its due and perfect time:
I often wonder
what the growers buy
One half so precious
as what they sell.
It was Mark Twain who asserted that the fruit Eve ate in the Garden couldn’t have been a tomato for she repented of it. And he may never even have tasted a Bradley County Pink, the very platonic ideal of tomato-ness.
Judge for yourself: Take one Bradley County Pink. Note the vivid color, the simple heft, the way it was made for the human hand. Eat no tomato before its time. And never refrigerate.
Neither delay nor hurry its ripening. Neither add to nor detract from its taste, just bring it out. Pause to appreciate the redness slowly achieved on your window sill day by day. Don’t forget to enjoy the scent-with eyes closed. Breathe deeply.
Then slice evenly, noting the fine texture. Be careful of the juice.
No, don’t taste. Not yet. First barely sprinkle with just a little coarse salt, or make a tomato sandwich using two slices of brown bread and maybe a little, a very little, just the lightest hint, of unsalted butter-nothing more. Or maybe a drop or two of olive oil. Now. Have the first bite of summer. And you’ll know what time itself tastes like. Good appetite!
Paul Greenberg, Pulitzer Prizewinning editorial page editor of the Democrat-Gazette, celebrates the arrival of tomato season every year with a paean to the Bradley County Pink and a pinch of salt.
E-mail him at: [email protected]
Perspective, Pages 69 on 06/23/2013