It’s a beautiful drive. A century-old church and cemetery sit on the right of a sharp curve, and sprawling, two-story homes with wrap-around porches are surrounded with flowerbeds and blooming scrubs.
Pea Ridge comes to a dead-end at the first of three crossings over Jordan Lake. Boats and skiers shimmer in the sun. Soon-to-be campers pull trailers straddled with pontoons and fishing boats. The campsite is just ahead, and they start the slow turn that takes them to the shore of another world.
In the summer, there are homemade signs along the way advertising “Tomatoes for Sale.” I know to be on the lookout for a picnic table set up at the end of a drive and layered with tomatoes still covered with specks of sandy soil. It’s only when I get out of the car that someone opens a screen door or gets up out of a swing to say hello.
It’s a familiar scene, and one that reminds me of my annual hunt for homegrown tomatoes. My appetite has been growing since February when store bins were full of hothouse imitations, and restaurants garnished every plate with pinkish-green slices taken from cold storage.
Now, in July, area farmers circle themselves with fresh produce, cut flowers, pickled everything. I look for the “Better Boy” tomato. There are a few. But none like the ones double the size of my fist that pulled the vine to the ground and rotted in ruts too wet to get to. Others were jerked from the stem and bitten from the bottom by a squirrel. The top half withered in the sun.
Yet, they were everywhere. Piled on picnic tables, in the swing, on the back porch, the kitchen table, in every lap. Served for breakfast, for lunch, for supper. The late ones wrapped in newspaper and put under the house would last until Thanksgiving.
The summer my mother became ill, we went on with the canning. Bottles and caps sat in boiling water while the doctors washed up. Beeps and buzzing gave off the same signal as the hissing steam that built to a pressure strong enough to blow the roof off.
I waited on the back porch for the cooling, when the canner could be uncapped. The scalding jars lifted out with long tongs were set on towels layered in patterns as precise as sterilized gauze.
At the vegetable stand, I pick the best from the basket and hand the woman one tomato at a time, cautioning her against bruising. Her face, caught in a thin ray of sun, is the face of my mother, and I’m reminded that hard times and hard work can kill you.
On the kitchen counter, tomatoes ripen one more day. The first one I cut bleeds in my hand and the face of the woman, my mother, rolls in waves over the Formica.
There hasn’t been a garden for years. No zinnias lining the far right side. No evenings sitting under the trees until dark, snapping, shelling, peeling. No snap beans. No squash. No okra. No lima beans. No tomatoes.
But, even now, I can see my father walking off imaginary rows. I can hear him brag to the neighbor about his “Better Boys,” pointing out the overgrown path to the compost pile. I remember how he sat in the swing alone. His hand wrapped around the chain; his arm draped over the back.
How, reaching for the bell, I could see him slowly drop his arm before bringing it around in a small half circle. And, in the soft darkness, there was the vision of my mother leaning against his shoulder, kissing his cheek.
Lois Wistrand is a Southern Pines freelance writer.
