Backyard Giants
I began working for the Messenger when I was just 16. I first worked after school as part of a mentor program kindly arranged by Roy Eaton and my English teacher, James Bell.
By the summer, I was a full-fledged intern. The folks at the Messenger were generous and allowed me to write news and feature stories, in addition to the more typical intern tasks like typing obits, making corrections and photographing giant vegetables.
That’s right. During my summer internships here, I was the official giant vegetable and/or fruit photographer. I took many pictures of giddy gardeners and the fruit of their labor. If anyone grew an abnormally large squash or a gigantic watermelon, they would tote it to the Messenger’s office for a photo-op.
Now I’ll be honest. Taking pictures of giant vegetables was not my favorite thing to do. In fact, I began to loathe it. During my last summer, I received a note to call a gardener on Trinity Street in Decatur who had grown an enormous tomato.
I didn’t call him back right away. I put it off for weeks. Keep in mind, his home was just a few blocks away from the office. It would have only taken 10 minutes to run down the street and snap a picture.
About August, the guilt overwhelmed me and I called the gardener with the enormous tomato. But it was too late. The tomato was gone and the vine was burned and scorched by the sun.
I had shirked my duties, and the county was deprived of seeing one gardener’s pride and joy. Maybe a giant tomato wasn’t important to me, but I’m sure it meant a lot to the gardener that tended its vines and lovingly watered it.
I recently came across a book that reminded me of those days — Backyard Giants by Susan Warren. Warren follows pumpkin growers in “the passionate, heartbreaking and glorious quest to grow the biggest pumpkin ever.”
It’s on my bookshelf at home and as soon as I read it, I’ll report back. I’m thinking these gourds may be a bit bigger than anything I ever saw in Wise County.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Kristen Tribe, Print media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.