South Carolina, Summertime, and Tomatoes

In the summer time in South Carolina, the rich red Southern earth produced the sweetest tomatoes on god’s green earth, her father used to say. She loved the red beefeaters, the dark orange oblong tomatoes her mother used to make salsa, she loved the funky green smell of tomato plants – fresh after the rain – so beautiful she had once bought a perfume called “tomato” so she could smell like that plant. The feel of the warm prickly stems that cradled that delicious fruit when you were sent out in the morning to harvest the fresh ones. The best way to eat them, it was commonly agreed was to pick them fresh and hot out of the garden, or freshly purchased from the old man who sold them on the highway turnoff to John’s Island. You took some white bread, it didn’t matter what kind – even wonder bread was fine, and a lash of Miracle Whip (although fancy people sometimes used Duke’s mayonnaise), and then just slices of that luscious tomato with a little salt on top. It was best to eat these drippy delicious slices of sunshine over the kitchen sink, leaning forward so as not to ruin your shirt. The sweet warm taste of the tomato, slightly salted, summoned up long summer days lounging by the pool, or swimming at the beach, or just sitting with her mother and father in the air conditioned dining room when her mother just didn’t feel like cooking. Tomato sandwiches and sweet tea.