going to market

During the summer, fruit and vegetable stands litter our landscape. I can drive from here to the mall in Douglasville and I pass two established fruit stands, one flea market where you can get fruit and at least two areas where you're likely to see the tailgaters - people on the roadside with a folding tent or umbrella and a folding chair, selling anything from watermelon to pineapple.
Unfortunately, in recent years (I'm not sure how recent, but that's another story), this has become a sort of jaded exercise. It's because few if any of these people are growers. You don't see a long sweeping vista of farmland behind them. More often than not, they are simply mom and pop shippers. They have driven down to Florida or South Georgia, or over to South Carolina, or out to Alabama. Because of where I live, this is what amounts to fresh produce.
And when you consider that Kroger imports from California, and Publix goes to Ecuador, I have to realize -- it IS fresh produce. Baby needs to accept a fact of life. Baby doesn't live in the country anymore.
So it's a nice thing to visit a farmer's market. It's an even nicer thing to have a conversation with the people who are selling wares there. Because you have the same situation there as you do along the side of the road. Some of the vendors at the farmer's market are shippers. They've loaded a wood sided truck with boxes and boxes of "local" produce, and they've set up shop to sell it to you. But there are also those who've walked out their backdoor to fields of tomatoes, rows of squash, and planting boxes of organic eggplant. And when you speak to them, you learn their names and who they are and what they do. And before too long, you have an accurate picture of what came from where. So while I pay $3.50/lb for my farmer's market tomatoes, I come home with a sack of Cherokee purples and zebra stripes from a Georgia backyard, and they taste wonderful compared to the plastic mealy substitutes for nutrition I get from the store. And because I ask the shippers, I even know where they got their peaches from. And if I'm not convinced that his peaches are worth $2/lb, which is at least .30 more than I can find in the store, he slices off a piece of it for me to taste.
"Ma'am, would you like to try this peach?"
"Yes sir, where did you get these?"
"We went out to South Carolina for these. These are clearstone peaches."
My smile brightens. "I know what that is, I might need to get some of these."
A clearstone peach is a rare commodity in a grocery store. Large commercial shippers despise them. See, when you pick a peach, it stops ripening. The only fate a peach can suffer after it comes off the branch is Rot City. You can't buy a hard-as-a-rock peach in the store, bring it home and set it on the counter, hoping it will ripen. It won't. It will only soften as it's disintegrating into mush. I'm sorry if this upsets you, but it's true.
Clearstone peaches come into this world on the soft side. They aren't a canning peach, the kind growers love because they are firm and hardy. They are table peaches. They belong in smaller, family orchards. They are the kind you pick as they ripen. They are the kind you pick at the height of summer and enjoy in the moment. They are the high note in summer's song.
"Now ma'am, there's nothing wrong with a Georgia peach," the old man confided in me. He looked to be in his late 60's or early 70's. I had been to his stand before and bought cucumbers from his daughter. She was friendly, but it had only taken a few questions from me before I understood that she didn't know the land, and didn't know her produce. She was there to smile and take money. I had walked away a little disappointed, but I'm glad I returned the following week to speak to this man. I was now staring -- smiling -- at the brains of the outfit. And I think he was worried that I'd be offended that he wasn't selling Georgia peaches.
I wasn't. "I just want you to know, there's nothing wrong with a Georgia peach, but they aren't table peaches."
"I lived a lot of years in South Carolina, and I'm real familiar with table peaches," I said to him. "Could we fill up a bag?"
"Ma'am, I have the diabetes, but when these come in, I have to have at least one a day."
"I totally understand." And I did. And he talked me into 5lbs of fresh, delicate South Carolina table peaches. And I'm so glad he did. Because that was two weeks ago, and for whatever reason I haven't been able to get back there to the stand. And that's a shame, because while they're probably still coming in, I missed getting anymore at their peak. The next time I go, the peaches will probably be south Georgia peaches. Or they will be Alabama Chilton peaches. And they will be good. But they won't sing in my mouth the way those did. It was a fleeting glimpse of the best of summer.

--Laura

Crackers

Lately I've noticed that when men are trying to be flattering, they call you a Georgia peach. Naturally, this only works in Georgia, but it goes something like this:

I'm just a southern gentleman, looking for my Georgia peach. Or,

I like ladies to be sweet like a Georgia peach.

I'm going to be honest with you. I know they are trying to be cute with that little come-on line, but lately, whenever someone has said this to me, all I thought was, "I need to get my eyebrows waxed and head to the gym again, this man thinks I'm round and fuzzy."

The truth is, I'm nothing like a Georgia peach. See, I come from Crackers. Oh, I know, a man trying to make an impression would get his face slapped if he called some lady a Cracker, but do you know what the word means, because it really fits. Let me explain.

Georgia Crackers were the original settlers of Georgia, so to call someone that name means their family has been around since Moses was a toddler. And as it happens, that describes much of my family on my mother's side.... Rollins.... Byrd... Tyson... Hodges... In fact, I can ride down the main street of a little town called Guyton, Georgia, and I can see the craftsmanship of my great great uncles in the finish work of many of the old houses still standing there. Beautiful old houses with intricate wooden scrollwork along the roofline.

And in front of those houses, the old railroad bed has been lifted up and planted with trees, standing in a straight row like soldiers. But it used to be the old Central of Georgia railroad company, which called Guyton, Station No. 30. William Perry Rollins used to drive that train from Savannah to Guyton, which is how he met Dora Ellen Tyson, his future wife. She was a school teacher who rode the train to her school. They were my great great grandparents. And my family is one of the few left who could be buried in the Guyton Cemetery just down the street, because we were among the founding members of the place.

The term "cracker" came into fashion during Elizabethan times, to describe braggarts. They got the term from the Middle English word crack, as in to crack a joke. There's an alternate spelling to this, which is craic. This word is still in use in Ireland and Scotland, which is where my people came from. In fact, by the mid 1700's, cracker was applied specifically to the Scotch-Irish settlers (still my folks), who came to this country and settled the remote southern back country. There is a passage from a letter written during that time to the Earl of Dartmouth, which says in part, "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode."

So as it turns out, I authentically come from a long line of tough crackers - self-reliant people who settled the American south, people who relished telling a tall tale, and were constantly on the move.

As it happens, I have the talent to accentuate or eliminate my southern accent almost at will, so to some, my tough cracker past might not be obvious. But it's there, in all the stories I tell, in the way I quietly take care of my own business, and in the travels I take. I've got cracker under my skin and in my blood.

So listen, if you want to flirt with me, you're welcome to call me a Georgia peach. But if you really want to win me over, you'll need to call me a Georgia cracker. But say it with spunk, okay? Say it like you mean it.

--Laura