The Italian Tomato Garden

[Stinky The Clown]

An old Italian man lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard.

His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love,
Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Pop,
Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried.
Love,
Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.

That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Pop,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you,
Vinnie

[elleng]

1. Molto bene!!!

[csziggy]

2. That reminds me of a story I found with Mom's papers

"Growing tomatoes for fun" by Charles O'Neall. I can't copy the whole thing here, it's eight pages long and it's probably still under copyright.

Mr. O'Neall lived outside Orlando in a small town. Since the ground there is very sandy, he hauled a bunch of truckloads of sewage sludge in to spread on his yard to promote a good lawn. What he got was a solid bed of tomato plants. He decided to leave them, pick whatever tomatoes were produced and mow them down later in the season for more organic material.

A friend saw the tomato plants, heard the story and repeated it to her son who worked for the Orlando Sentinel Star (as it was called in those days). The son wrote a human interest piece and it was printed in the paper. Then the wire services picked up the story. The Sentinel Star sent out a photographer and expanded the story.

Mr. O'Neall got requests for interviews from all over. He did live radio interviews over the phone and the story just kept spreading. People came by his house as part of their Florida sight seeing tours. People sent him letters from all over the world, some enclosing clippings of articles from their local papers, some asking for tomatoes or even for sludge. Johnny Carson did a monologue about the sludge tomatoes on the Tonight Show. The Sentinel Star did follow up stories about the notoriety the tomato story had caused.

Esquire Magazine added them to their "Dubious Achievement Awards of 1974" and a year later the AP revived the story, starting the cycle back again. It took several years for the lawn to stop producing tomato plants. As Mr. O'Neall put it, "Tomato seeds are not digested, they just pass through." And people in that area must have eaten a LOT of tomatoes!