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Tomatoes made them stupid
By Skip Miller
Staff Writer
I was a small child when I started warning people. Don’t eat the tomatoes because they will make you stupid. Nobody listened. In fact, they laughed.
When I saw a member of my family bite into a freshly-picked tomato, juice and seeds squirting out the sides of the mouth, I involuntarily spasmed.
Why wouldn’t they listen?
When we were kids I hit my cousin Jimmy in the head with a Better Boy. Some of it got into his mouth and he hasn’t been the same since.
A glimmer of hope arrived in my teen years. A movie named The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was released. I thought the movie would present the truth I needed. It would be quasi-documentary of people no longer able to tie their shoes because of tomato consumption.
No such luck.
It was about big, squishy tomatoes capable of self-locomotion.
Like those who were in peril were going to believe big, squishy tomatoes capable of self-locomotion truly existed.
On numerous occasions I have had lunch and the Frost Café and ordered the chicken salad on rye.
“Lettuce and tomato?”
Tomatoes will make you stupid, I warned.
They laughed because they thought I was kidding.
I must go there today and find out if they are still laughing.
Back in the height of the tomato season they said don’t eat the tomatoes because tomatoes will give you the … salmonella poisoning. You will become as ill as a spring colt that got into the clover.
They ordered us to throw away the tomatoes until we received further instructions, and we obeyed.
Tons of tomatoes rotted in the field. Tons more were carted out of the grocery stores and taken to the landfills where they were left to rot and smell bad.
Warehouses were emptied and a customer could no longer order two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, pickle, tomato, onion on a sesame seed bun.
A BLT became an LB – lettuce has its own issues so we were better off ordering a bacon sandwich.
At the crest of it all I would tell Carmine at Bella Mia’s to give me a No. 4, heavy on the tainted tomatoes. He said he didn't sell tainted tomatoes. I said let's give it a shot anyway. Might be good enough for a day off or three.
On it went until the tomato industry piled up $100 million in losses.
You know what they did then?
They said “sorry about the tomato thing. Our bad.” They said eat all the tomatoes you want, but stay away from the jalapeno peppers. Jalapeno peppers will give you the … salmonella poisoning.
That’s not all they’ll give you.
Jalapenos and their little cousins, those habernos, are evil. I think they were the weapons used to stop the killer tomatoes.
How could such a thing happen? How could people paid to know better make such a mistake and cost tomato farmers $100 million? How could they not know a tomato from a pepper?
It happened because they wouldn’t listen to me.
Tomatoes, the very thing they cursed, made them stupid.
It didn’t have to happen this way. It’s not like they weren’t warned.
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