The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

Friend has his ‘followers,’ city police and psychiatrist




Last week I had email from my buddy, Fred Beste, he who lives there on the tundra in Wind Gap, (northeastern) Pennsylvania

Points East

While trees are not supposed to grow in tundra soil, and Fred has trees aplenty. I am somewhat convinced that the soil around that neck of the woods never completely thaws beyond a depth of a few scant feet because I have jumped into Fred’s frog pond at the end of July and it sure felt like the bottom was solid ice.

Anyway, my pal wrote to say that he had just picked his first Giant Syrian tomato. I am irked because last year he sent me seed that produced the absolute best tomatoes I have ever eaten. Late last January, when it came time to order garden seed, I was unable to find the name of the company from which Fred had procured his Giant Syrians and I had failed to save some from last year’s crop. Instead of calling Fred to get the name of his supplier, I simply did a Google search and got at least half a dozen hits for companies that had Giant Syrian seed for sale. I proceeded to order from one of them that I had previously believed to be reliable.

When my ‘maters began ripening in mid-July, I discovered that about the only two things they had in common with the ones I’d obtained from Fred was the fact that they grew on green vines and proved to be red in color. That’s where any similarity began and ended.

There is nothing giant about this year’s crop. The fruits are mostly skin and seeds and they are just barely better than having no tomatoes at all. As a matter of fact I could probably use them to wean myself off tomatoes forever.

But, thank the Lord, I have half a dozen other varieties that should produce all the ‘maters we will need until the first hard freeze.

In the meantime, I have foisted off what this company called Giant Syrians to half a dozen other folks and most of them are now mad at me and they are telling me that if this is the best tomato I’ve ever eaten, they don’t even want to be in the same ZIP code with whatever I call the worst. Truth be told, whatever this one is, it is the worst I’ve ever grown. And if I live through the coming winter, I will be getting real Giant Syrian tomato seed from Fred or from his supplier come 2016.

In the meantime, I’m trying to find the canceled check I wrote to pay for the shamefully sorry excuse for tomatoes that wasted my time and energy and caused me big time serious humiliation. I intend to hang the seed company that sent them to me out to dry because they also screwed me with something they called Giant Oxhearts that are no kin to the real thing. I should have stuck to Totally Tomatoes, but they don’t offer Giant Syrians and I was trying to do one-stop shopping.

Furthermore, to my friends, especially Tom Miller, who went to great lengths in the middle of a battle with cancer and chemo therapy to purchase big containers and potting soil with great confi- dence in me supplying them with astounding tomato plants, I sincerely apologize. Next year I will make sure that we have the real thing. Hopefully we can talk Fred into saving us some seed from the ones he is just now harvesting.

In other news, Fred also recently forwarded an email message that actually deserves a full column’s worth of commentary. I may do one later but here’s the message.

“For those of my generation who do not really comprehend why Facebook exists, I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook by applying the same principles.

“Therefore, every day I go down the street and tell everybody I meet what I have recently eaten, how I feel, what I did last night, with whom, and what I’m getting ready to do right now. I give them pictures of my family, my dog and me gardening and swimming in my pool. I listen in on their conversations and tell them I love them.

“And it works: I already have three people following me. Two of them are city cops and the other one is a psychiatrist at the state insane asylum.”

I am, personally, a big fan of Facebook because I enjoy reading all the posts in genealogy, gardening, Letcher High alumni and even farm animals for sale groups. I also enjoy looking at photos of plants, flowers and even goats.

However, I frequently see posts like the next one that leave me wondering what the person who put it up was thinking.

One day last week, a woman shared the fact that “Walmart was the only place where she could find a certain brand of uber-cute, very sexy, black silk panties that fit her because she was a plusplus size and nobody else carried anything sexy in her size that was comfy and affordable.

“But don’t waste your time going back to that store because I bought every pair they had.”

I thought to myself that this was way more information than I needed, then I got to wondering what a pair of plus-plus size sexy panties might look like.

So, the next time I’m in a Walmart store, I may take time to browse a bit in the lingerie department. That old guy with the gray mustache holding up the big black bloomers will probably be me. Look for the pic on Facebook.



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