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Grainger County Tomato
Festival
In Grainger County, Tennessee, the
locals turn out in full force to celebrate their
best--and most famous--crop: tomatoes. Each year,
this remote mountain community in the northeast
corner of the state throws a festival on the last
full weekend in July (in 2005, July 29-31). This
year, the event drew as many people as live in the
entire county (about 22,000, according to festival
organizers Kelly Longmire and Kermit Clark), about
a 30 percent increase from last year.
The
superior taste of the Grainger tomato has never
been adequately explained, even
by the University of Tennessee scientists who have
studied it, but most locals, like Frances Clark,
believe "it has something to do with the soil."
Local farmers switch varieties--sometimes using
the green-shouldered Celebrity or Empire, occasionally
Big Boy or Better Boy--but always manage to turn
out a thin-skinned, ruby-fruit berry of a tomato,
suitable for dusting with salt and leaning over
the sink to enjoy. Mountain farmers, sometimes a
quirky and cantankerous group, don't share their
secrets, often closely following the cryptic planting
signs of the Old Farmers Almanac. Their independence
has thus far prevented any sort of alliance that
would allow the business to grow to Vidalia onion
status. And although the tomato's fame has spread,
many farmers, like Steve Longmire, won't ship beyond
a 300-mile radius, because tender Graingers won't
survive the trip. "We're not really interested
in getting bigger," says wife Kelly Longmire.
"We just want to get better."
Grainger farmers have tomato growing
down to a science, producing tomatoes nearly year-round.
The season ends with first frost, usually in November.
In December, says Kermit Clark (who will be next
year's festival chairman), farmers begin seeding
in hothouses. In January, small plants show. By
March, the first crop is in--and although they are
hothouse varieties, they're vastly superior to any
cardboard-centered supermarket 'mater you'll find.
By July, the glorious red fruits, along with heirloom
and specialty varieties like yellow-and-red Mr.
Stripey and purple-centered pulps, are trumpeted
in every tiny IGA with hand-lettered signs: GRAINGER
CO. TOMATOES.
This
year's festival included an auto show, arts and
crafts exhibit, book signing, Civil
War encampment, beauty pageant (for Miss Grainger
County, renamed from the original title, Miss
Tomato),
Tomato Wars (like paintball, except with tomatoes),
and, of course, an Elvis impersonator. Kermit
Clark,
who manned the auto show's concession booth, says
the group sold between "18 and 19 bushels of
green tomatoes, one slice at a time, about 150 pounds
of dried pinto beans, and . . . Mama, you on there?" He
directs the question to his wife, Frances, who's
picked up another phone in their Rutledge home.
"Yes," replies Frances. "And about
1200 corn muffins." The auto club's combo
meal of five slices of fried green tomatoes, a
12-ounce
bowl of pintos, slice of onion, cornbread and soft
drink rang up at $4."
"Our religion wouldn't let us
charge any more," Kermit says. "It just
wouldn't be right. I was in the tent, cooking.
I'll
tell you, I'd hate to have to fry green tomatoes
for a living. It was rough! I had to raise my hand
to go to the rest room. No, I can't tell you the
recipe for the fried tomatoes. Otherwise, we wouldn't
have a gimmick. We did eventually learn--now we
have two deep fryers. We started out with four
cast-iron
skillets. We didn't know any better! It was the
old-fashioned way!"
"That was the way Mamaw done
it," Frances says.
"I can't tell you the recipe,
but the tomatoes have to be hard as baseballs,"
says Kermit. "Otherwise, they'll fall apart.
And I can tell you this: the coating came in a
box.
I saw it in the store, and we ended up using 100
pounds of it, and ran out on Sunday. That's as
far
as I'll go. We have to have our secrets. Just like
these farmers, they don't really trust each other."
"It's their business," Frances
says.
"It's
like President Reagan said, 'Trust, but verify.'
You know, it came out of the
moonshining up here."
"Nowadays, they even grow a little
marijuana," Frances titters.
"Yep.
A little wild weed. Some left-handed tobacco.
Anyway, frying tomatoes isn't
rocket science: when they float, they're done.
Every three minutes, we'd fry about 40 slices.
We still
couldn't keep up."
As
president of the auto club (which will donate
about $3,000 to charitable causes this
year from its festival proceeds), president of
the Rutledge Lions Club, which sponsors the event,
and
chairman of the 2005 festival, Kermit has his "platter
full." Still, he hopes one day he will have
enough time to stop frying tomatoes long enough
to catch the performance of a good friend and his
next-door neighbor, Avery Turley, auto shop instructor
at the vocational school, ordained minister, and
Elvis impersonator.
Kermit once saw the real Elvis at a Mississippi
show where he was billed the "Hillbilly Cat"
(with a "put-your-eyes-out" pink jacket
to match his Caddy, "and that one leg a-twistin'").
Still, Turley surprised him by performing last year
at an auto show where Kermit had driven a '68 Cadillac
hearse. Turley, he says, emerged from the back of
the hearse, announced to the crowd, "Dang!
It's hot down there!" and started singing.
"I didn't even know he was an Elvis impersonator
until then, but he's good," Kermit says.
"Give him a plug," Frances
says.
"I fry catfish too. I use the
same breading," Kermit says. "That's
all I can give you. You can probably figure it
out from
there. And remember: when they float, they're done."
For more information, call 865-828-3433,
or go to www.graingrcountytomatofestival.com.
Krista Reese
SFA
Symposium Considers Food and Race
The
theme of this year's Southern Foodways
Symposium, held
in Oxford October 7 through 10, was "Southern
Food in Black and White." In addition
to the usual good food, good drink, and
good talk, the symposium acknowledged several
people who have contributed to creating
an atmosphere in which such a potentially
divisive topic could be discussed.
The symposium heard
a moving presentation by the Rev. Will D.
Campbell, who served as Director of Religious
Life at the University of Mississippi from
1954 to 1956 and was forced to leave because
of his civil rights activities. Campbell
was named Honorary Chaplain of the University
of Mississippi in acknowledgment of a career
dedicated to spiritual and racial freedom.
The Ruth Fertel Keeper
of the Flame Award was presented by her
son Randy Fertel to Martha Hawkins, whose
restaurant in Montgomery, Alabama, continues
the tradition of the legendary Georgia Gilmore,
whose table brought Southerners of both
races together over great Southern cooking.
Filmmaker Joe York presented a short film,
The Welcome Table, honoring the achievement
of Martha Hawkins.
Two
founding members of SFA, Jessica Harris
and Nathalie Dupree,
received Jack Daniel Lifetime Achievement
Awards. Charles Regan Wilson, director
of
the Center for the Study of Southern Culture,
presented the award to Natalie Dupree
for
her "work over three decades as an
icon of Southern foodways, as a cooking
teacher, restaurateur, television and radio
host, columnist, and cookbook author."
Jessica Harris's award, presented by Leah
Chase, cited her work as a historian of
the foodways of the African Diaspora. Jessica
Harris has been called, Wilson pointed out,
"Zora Neale Hurston of the culinary
world. Like Hurston, she has a way with
words, a love of history, and a passion
for anthropology, as well as an appreciation
for everyday folks and the simple things
of life."
Tom Head
Thomas
Head is executive wine and food editor
of Washingtonian magazine.
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