Think tomatoes are harmless? Think again. The Tomato Wars are well underway. Garden plots all over this country are being tilled, fertilized, and de-rocked in preparation for the war that is coming to a feverous pitch. Whether it’s fresh off the vine, one of the main ingredients of a BLT, or battered and fried, the tomato is a staple of most summertime tables.
A quick look back through history finds the seemingly harmless vegetable is not so harmless after all. Still, it has had a profound influence on history of Europe and the Americas.
The tomato vine reaches back to 700 A.D. and the Aztecs. Back then newlyweds would be presented on their wedding night with a basket full of red tomatoes. Considered an aphrodisiac, it helped lead to the quick rise in population.
Aztec women used the tomatoes in dying their hair red for religious ceremonies and men used the red dye to paint fierce designs on their faces before going into battle.
In the 16th century, after a visit to the distant land of Montezuma, Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes brought back the first tomatoes to Europe. He also brought back something else. Eat too many tomatoes at a single sitting, and you’ll get Montezuma’s Revenge.
Most Europeans in the 1500s thought tomatoes were poisonous and not just because of Montezuma’s Revenge. Tomatoes actually killed many people, but only the rich.
Back then flatware and plates were made out of pewter, something only the rich could afford. The highly acidic tomatoes reacted with the pewter, allowing lead to leach into the food, thus causing lead poisoning and an agonizing death. Not so with silver. The rich changing their flatware to silver gave birth to the saying, “Born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”
Tomatoes did not kill the poor. You see, back in the 1500s, poor folks had flatware and plates made out of wood. They enjoyed tomatoes exclusively until the 1800s. Living a simple life had its advantages, even back then.
It’s well documented that in a public demonstration February of 1692, John Gibbon ate a tomato in front of the entire town of Salem. Up to that point, it was believed if anyone ate the poisonous red fruit, their blood would immediately turned into acid, then they would be poisoned, start frothing at the mouth, and fall to the ground in a seizure as their appendix exploded from their body.
When none of this happened to John, he was declared a witch and then executed. His was the first execution of the Salem Witch Trials.
The tomato helped to win the Revolutionary War. During the battle of Bunker Hill, American patriot Col. William Prescott gave an order, “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.” Long thought that this order was given because the American patriots were running low on powder and every shot had to count, the real reason for the odd order has been lost over time.
The Colonialists were indeed running low on powder, but they had an abundance of tomatoes. When the British got close enough, they were bombarded with tomatoes. Once the opposing force was hit in the eyes, the high acid of the tomatoes caused a temporary blindness. Some accounts have so many tomatoes thrown that the sky actually looked as if it had turned red. It being early in the morning, the battle also gave birth to the saying, “Red sky at night, a sailor’s delight; red sky in the morning, sailor be warned.” The British forces were eventually overtaken and the war won.
During colonial times, tomatoes were only used as a table decoration, and for good reasons. It was a widely held belief eating a tomato would cause your blood to turn to acid. The belief didn’t start to change until Thomas Jefferson while in Paris ate tomatoes, fell in love with them, and brought the seeds back to America. He planted them at his home, Monticello, in a 1,000-foot terrace garden.
In 1784, Mr. Jefferson even sent a then-19-year-old James Hemmings back to France to study how to cook tomatoes correctly. Because of his culinary expertise, James was granted his freedom by Mr. Jefferson and was credited with bringing French cuisine to America.
In the mid-18th century, Dr. Sequeyra from Portugal visited Monticello and, after eating the remarkable tasting vegetable from Mr. Jefferson’s tomato terrace garden, coined the phrase, “A tomato a day will lead to a long life and keep the doctor away.”
Until the late 1800s, the tomato was classified as a fruit to avoid taxation. But some tried to change that classification to a vegetable so it could be taxed. One of the real reasons for the Civil War was indeed this tax. After the tax was leveed, it was considered unlawful and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. The court finally ruled that the tomato was indeed a vegetable and could then be taxed.
Lastly, 1945 was the first time the town folk of Bunol, Spain dragged their elected officials out in the street and pummeled them with overly ripe tomatoes. It seems they weren’t happy being lied to by the newly elected politicians, so they took matters into their own hands.
Some of the protesters were arrested and prosecuted for their crime. The phrase, “caught red handed,” was born during this protest.
Since that first demonstration, the food fight has become an annual tradition. Last year over 50,000 people participated and 150,000 over-ripe tomatoes were hurled during La Tomatina festival.
For all those new readers out there, some of the information in the story above is true, some is true-ish, and the rest just a produce from my own cluttered mind. Still, from the looks of how things are shaping up on the political landscape this year; it may be a good idea if we all grow a lots and lots of tomatoes.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories since 2001. To read more of Rick’s stories, visit his blog: storiesbyrick.wordpress.com.]
