Putting the Squeeze on Tomatoes

Let’s get serious: Let’s talk tomatoes.

Now, as we all know, industrial civilization has its price. The power loom made England a commercial giant, but rent its social fabric in ways that have yet to mend. Exit that cheery bastion of thrift, craft and sedition, the weaver’s cottage; enter Blake’s dark, satanic mill, tenements and work to rule. It’s worse than silly, of course, to oppose progress on principle, and there’s a lot we like about technological civilization--penicillin, for example, and the compact disc.

Industrial civilization has delivered us all from what Marx--in his own blunt poetry--called “the idiocy of rural life.” What it has not delivered is an eatable tomato. Now, man, even liberated man, does not live by bread alone; he also needs wine, good olive oil and tomatoes--unless, of course, he is Chinese, in which case the cuisines of Szechwan and Hunan offer their own consolations, many of them involving eggplant.

But we digress.

Our topic is tomatoes, a fruit which the contemporary American factory-farm seems un- able to treat as anything but an object of abuse. It’s all a question of breeding. Modern, manufactured tomatoes must be tough-skinned, thick-walled and relatively dry if they are to endure the indignity of shipping and long storage. The problem is that a tomato’s taste is in its juice--and that’s precisely what agribusiness and the University of California have squeezed out of this situation.

Hence, what you get in the supermarket is a kind of parody, sort of Potemkin produce. In fairness, it must be said that the undisciplined appetite of a public insistent on having fruits and vegetables out of their proper season has created a climate in which this deceit can flourish. But enough of that. In this instance we hold not for self-denial but self-help.

In other words, grow your own.

Now, as the soil and night air warm, spade a sunny, well-drained site. Work in plenty of aged manure or compost. That task behind you, choose and plant several of the American hybrids with names like neon slogans: Better Boy, Super Steak, Celebrity. We happen to be partial to the French imports, which recently have become available locally. Their names are like music: Carmello, Marmande, Dona, Lorissa. Remember to water evenly, but not excessively.

Now, in the matter of eggplant and Szechwan peppers . . . .