The great tomato conspiracy

I believe I’ve unearthed a cartel, crime ring or whatever you want to call it, that begs to have the full force of global law enforcement come to bear on it. It’s the trafficking of sundried tomatoes.

You may already be aware that this would be far from the first edible to lubricate the engine of organized crime. For many years, the distribution channel for certain cheeses has been tightly controlled and costly. I’m not going to say by who, because they are a bit publicity-shy, but the cheeses are often served with pasta. And, just try to multi-source olive oil.

If you still think that turf wars are limited to controlled substances, open up a store. You want magazines for your newsstand? Get a quote from a magazine distributor in your area. Now, get a competitive quote. Good luck on that. You got a better chance of finding two waterworks in town than a second magazine distributor, unless you check the cemetery.

I don’t eat salads because I like them. They’re bowls of lawn clippings to me. I just ingest them to offset some of the salted, fried and chemically preserved foodstuffs that are the building blocks of my preferred diet. If chemicals preserve meat, then they should preserve my body, right? Unassailable logic. But, eating the foliage keeps my test scores in the range that keeps the doctor off my back.

About the only way I can endure grazing on the flora is to enhance it with goodies. One of my favorites is sundried tomatoes. Remember, they are a member of the somewhat tolerable fruit clan, not the odious vegetable ilk.

Two weeks ago, the grocery store was out of them. Last week, same deal. Is there a tomato famine I haven’t heard about? I cornered one of the more lucid looking employees. He directed me to an aisle that I knew would not pan out.

Tomatoes packed in glass jars of thirty-weight oil will not do. I mean, what was the point of drying them if you’re going to abominate them by sopping them in that? I insisted on the real deal.

He leaned closer to me and whispered he could look into it and let me know. Was he fishing for a kickback? Do I need a “connection” to feed my habit? Alas, I have a monkey on my back!

This morning, I struck paydirt. I scored bags of the suckers. Tonight, I tore the first one open to drop some of the gems into the hideous sea of green. Something on the package caught my eye. “Product of Turkey.”

Holy trade deficit! I can understand why we might import bananas, pineapples and mangoes, but tomatoes? WTF? Is there a square inch of ground in the continental U.S. where you couldn’t spit a tomato seed and get a plant? Have we not mastered the advanced technology of drying fruit? I mean, every third teenager can hack into national defense system, but no one knows how to desiccate a tomato?

I’m not exaggerating about the fertility of the beast. Some years back, a community in Florida was dead set on eliminating chemical lawn fertilizers. Offering a free alternative, they processed their sewage into dry fertilizer and offered it with no charge and a guarantee against offending odor. No problem until after the first rain. Hundreds of pristine lawns sprouted tomato plants from property line to property line. Then, there was quite a stink.

So, a tomato seed can survive the human digestive system, sewage treatment and reprocessing into powdered fertilizer, and still germinate, but we can’t noodle out a better supply solution than shipping from Turkey? And, just how can we expect to maintain our position of world leader in illegal immigration if we don’t have ample pickable crops to attract them?

This whole thing just doesn’t add up, which means there’s a hidden level. Mark my words, when tomatoes are in short supply and being brought in from halfway around the world, palms are getting greased, trucks are catching fire and distribution upstarts are hobbling around on crutches. While Congress concerns itself with such pervasive issues as millionaire (widely) professional football player pensions and dietary supplements of MLB ball chuckers (who collectively comprise a whopping few ten thousandths of a percentage of the population), hundreds of millions of us are crushed under the oppressive thumb of the underworld tomato cartel.

There is one way, and only one way to attack this. I need to produce a whole bunch of those magnetic ribbons to slap onto cars. Anyone know what color isn’t taken?