Fast Food Gardens, Billions Underserved

Recently, my adult children and I took a trip down the Columbia Gorge. Midway, a.k.a. somewhere between The Dalles and Hood River, they spotted the ‘familiar arches.’ (Dare I say ‘Golden Arches’ without igniting corporate litigation?) Much like Pavvelo’s dog with conditioned responses, our van automatically moved into the drive-thru queue. Robotically, we exchanged pocket change for boxed pies alongside à la carte McQuicker fries. (That should appease legal.)? Bags, arms, mouths. Ten minutes later and safely purring along I-84, I looked back. My boys’ boxed pies lay among sappy-happy bags, barely nibbled, with the remaining (can I call it food?) scattered cold, lifeless, and oily. Utterly devoid of mystical enchantment, I reflected. By stark contrast, nothing in my parents’ garden ever went to waste.?

In my childhood, the drive-thru was still a mystery, and the Arches (dodged that branding bullet) hadn't yet embraced (choked) every neighborhood. Mother's Pies and Uncle Ben's Bakery meant your grandmother or uncle might be in the kitchen, up to their elbows rolling out flour dough or hovering over a hot stove stirring up the secret family sauce. Most families had gardens.

Our family garden began long before the actual growing season. It started with the arrival of the Gurney's Seed Catalog. Gurney’s came a few weeks after the delivery of one’s Christmas Wishbook, a.k.a. the Montgomery Ward’s Catalog, and approximately the same time the Farmer’s Almanac was released. Yet, it was days (maybe weeks) before our friendly neighbor girl knocked on our front door selling Current’s Easter cards.?

When Gurney’s Seed Catalog graced our mailbox, what an event that was! Gurney’s featured a collection of carriage-sized pumpkins, hybrid seeds, colorful annuals, dwarf plants, juicier-than-the-competition tomatoes, and seeds for all seasons. The catalog could hold us captive for the better part of an entire Sunday.??

There were several ways to read said seed catalog, and all were equally important to the growing project. One method was to sit at the kitchen table with the filmy-colored paper. The table was the preferred method when fighting with a sibling about which pumpkin seed to buy for the best jack-o-lantern or what type of cornstalk made the best barn-party decoration. I can still smell the ink from my portion of that page we ripped in two. (To be fair, it was an ad for the ant farm, and I saw it first.) Another way to read the catalog was to lie on your back, preferably on green shag carpet. This option was best when poring over which type of pea seed to purchase or what green bean grew the longest. Bonus points could be given if the pea color matched said carpet.?

At the beginning of each spring, my father tilled our lot into a proverbial smorgasbord. Then, at the first sign of seedling growth, my brother and I watched tiny sprouts poke their green heads up above rich earth. Sometimes, we snuck out to the garden to spy if the plants had grown overnight. Other times, we tried pulling the seedlings to force them up faster, only to learn plants will NOT be forced.?

We’d eat sun-ripened tomatoes, first plucking them, then placing them into our mouths while letting the juices spray to the backs of our throats, then run down our ‘summer’ chins. Watching the garden grow was almost (dare I say?) a magical event. By mid-summer, my parents, brother, and I began taking the garden plant by plant, stem by stem, stalk by stalk to the kitchen sink. There, we’d shake dirt casings off Russet potatoes, rinse tiny earthworms, and separate root from leaf, bud from stalk, and kernel from cob. Sometimes we separated the earthworms too. (Garden trivia: Earthworms don’t die when cut in two.)?

Stained hands to happy mouths, my brother and I, clad in adult-sized aprons flowing at the legs and tied twice about our middles, stood on kitchen chairs watching our mom whip up the garden spoils. These became clever bits of art, a pastry, a dessert, a canned item, a loaf, a pie. I can still feel the steam from the pressure cooker. My mind can ‘hear’ the faint canning jar lid pop. From a distant corner radio, Paul Harvey’s voice played “the rest of the story,” wishing us “good day,” as my mother told us, “You can’t eat all the berries and make jam,” and “we don’t eat raw eggs.” (Why is it we don’t eat raw eggs?)?We put our hands, tongues, and noses into the whole happy mess. It was an assembly line of enchantment.??

Suddenly, wind gusts from the Columbia Gorge brought me back to today. Oregon rain and wind formed small caps upon the water to my left. I noted my grown children were settled into post-carb sleep. (Would diabetic comas be hyperbole?) I stared at the ribbon of highway stretching ahead. Like the point where the sky hits the water, something came together in my mind. Real pies are not ordered.?Real pies take time and effort.

In this microwave age, even our lawns are rolled out pre-fab. Our trees are fake. Our plants are plastic. Our flowers are artificial and scentless. Our fast-food mindsets have given us more calories but with less in them. Drive-thru demands have resulted in short-order speeds garnering side-dish results. This modern plastic-ware society with its "four-minute marriage mentalities" has garnered bigger, fancier—yet emptier homes. ‘Prime-time parenting’ has entrenched our children with silicon action figures, yet left them strangers to real historical leaders and true thought mentors. While institutions drop knowledge faster and faster, our schools fail at incredible speeds.??

Americans are running on empty, over-drawn, and over-spent—yet much faster. But, how can we blame a generation that was fundamentally taught everything could be supersized for only 20 cents? Or that things are not fixed but instead upgraded every six months? That purchases, phones, radios, appliances, and household items by routine should be discarded???

?Perhaps we need fewer drive-thrus and more gardens, fewer establishments named `Grandma,` and `Uncle` and more real contact with our elders. Maybe we need slower cars, slower foods, and slower days. May I propose we need fewer hand softeners and instead more proudly earned calluses? Dare I suggest we should have more teens tending gardens rather than time tending teenagers? Or projects that, by design, engender patience over speed???

What if families sat on porches counting real stars at night instead of television stars? What if neighbors shared common gardens? Would more community ensue? What if we had fewer Happy Meals and more truly ‘HAPPIER’ meals???

I am not suggesting we go back. But, perhaps we’ve bought into the `disposable dream’ long enough—that everything comes fast, cheap and easy. Past generations had many social and ethical myths and inequalities to unlearn. However, they fundamentally understood what anyone growing even the tiniest of plants knows: Things of value are not ordered, they are tended.

So, I've decided, the next pie my children eat—is the one they GROW!

Pie anyone?

~~ Written by Cindy R. Chamberlin, Feb. 2022.