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An open letter
to a nice guy
By
SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com
Dear David Pope:
I'm writing this as an open letter in hopes that I'm expressing the thoughts
of a lot of people who don't have access to a medium like this.
First, I want to thank you for the fresh vegetables you have shared for
years with your friends and neighbors and their number is greater than
you know. The location of your truck farm on Ebenezer Road just outside
Peachtree City makes it easy for many of us to stop by on our way to or
from the south part of town.
I don't know what pleases me more, the availability of good, fresh food
at reasonable prices or the fact that you ran your stand on the honor
system. Every time I wrote a check or dropped some bills into your lockbox,
I felt a real glow of satisfaction that business can still be transacted
that way. It was, each time, a reaffirmation of my belief in innate human
goodness.
Until this weekend, when my idealistic bubble burst and innate human evil
appears to have won the day.
A friend called with the stunning news that you had posted another of
your famous signs on the wall of your roadside stand, saying that you
had been ripped off once again and were closing the stand Labor Day weekend.
I had to see it to believe it, and dashed out to your place to stockpile
sweet corn, another cantaloupe, and some succulent tomatoes. Ever the
optimist, I decided to interpret your sign to mean you were closing just
for the holiday, but Beth said she thinks you mean you're shutting down
for good, worn out by the thievery.
I haven't the heart to call to ask you. I'm too afraid she's right.
David, let me tell you why your having that honor-system stand stocked
with our daily dinner is more important than you may realize. Certainly,
it is convenient but no more than Kroger, whose produce department offers
far more variety than you possibly could.
The difference is that the veggies on
your old spool tables, most of them, are mere yards from where they soaked
up the summer sun and whatever water you were able to deliver to them.
They have not spent the night in the back of a truck, nor required the
burning of fossil fuel to deliver them cross-country.
(Did you know?: On average, our food is flown, shipped, or trucked 1,400
miles from field to plate, according to the Rodale Institute. They estimate
that 10 calories of energy are expended to ship a single calorie to our
table.)
In a time when few kids know where their food comes from, parents can
bring them to small farms like yours, and let them see the connection
between earth and dinner table. At larger spreads like the Adamses, on
Highway 54 or Mickey Harp's place in south Fayette, children can experience
the bug bites and sweat and backache of harvesting the food that will
fill their tummies before sundown.
Sure, it's only a hint at the effort of farming, but it beats ripping
open a package from the freezer or cranking open a can. And tastes so
much better.
I hope this doesn't sound too "New-Age," but research suggests
that eating produce grown close to where one lives can actually confer
health benefits derived from the earth itself, reducing allergies and
digestive disorders.
David, I know from talking with you and by reading the plaintive signs
lining the walls of your little stand that your frustration with theft
has more than once driven you to the point of hanging a chain permanently
across your driveway. No one can blame you. And no one can blame you for
suspecting that much of the petty purloining of vegetables a handful of
beans, a couple of tomatoes off the top of a basket is being done by people
who probably make more money than you do.
I'm glad you have a decent retirement income, because I know you farm
now largely out of love for working the land. Keeping the roadside stand
open is about sharing with your neighbors, and their dishonesty is a slap
in the face for you.
How can we who appreciate your hard work and generosity help you to keep
the okra and squash and scuppernongs flowing? Is there any way our gratitude
can help balance your disappointment in your fellow man?
Might you consider keeping the stand open just a few hours a day, or one
day a week, and being there? That would stop the thievery and
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