In praise of local tomatoes

(Don Dale photo, 2011)

Forget the imperfections. They can be trimmed away. Instead, glory in the taste of the first of summer's most-anticipated bounty -- the locally grown tomato.

My grandmother Nichols always told me that you could expect the first of your home-grown tomatoes to ripen in time for July 4th. I used to grow my own in the back yard, but I gave it up after several droughts, a few losing battles with squirrels, and the realization that I could always depend on the kindness of neighbors.

But I found some genuine Hanover tomatoes several days ago at my favorite roadside vegetable stand. I spent about $4.50 for five beautiful specimens, knowing full well that the price per pound would fall dramatically as the season wears on. No matter: The first is always the best.

I've been told that it's the soil in Hanover County that makes Hanover tomatoes so delicious. Whatever the reason, they're one of the many precious gifts that come from living in Central Virginia. I remember bringing home at least a bushel basketful in the 1960s when a friend of mine and I spent several backbreaking days picking tomatoes at his parents' Hanover County farm. But the effort paid off because we could stop to eat as many as we wanted, ripe and warm from the sun and right off the vine, as we sweated our way up and down row after row.

Hanover tomatoes are the best, but backyard-garden tomatoes come close. When I was a kid, my father used to eat the first one of his vine-ripe tomatoes, from our backyard, much like he'd eat an apple, while standing over the kitchen sink with a salt shaker in his free hand. I didn't grow tomatoes myself this year, but I did eat the first Hanover tomato I purchased while standing at the kitchen sink. It was akin to a religious experience.

I sliced the second tomato, spread two slices of white bread with mayonnaise, and made a sandwich.

Since then, I have had sliced ripe tomatoes with balsamic vinaigrette, roast chicken sandwiches with tomato slices, tomatoes cut into chunks and topped with blue cheese, and salt-and-peppered tomato slices with scrambled eggs and bacon. Tonight, I'll have chopped Hanover tomatoes, shrimp, minced garlic, butter and Parmesan cheese over pasta.

This is my paean, my song of joyful praise, to the Hanover tomato. There is none -- none! -- better.

Going home again

Built in 1940, this is the first house I remember living in. It looked far different when I lived there. (Don Dale photo, 2011)

Last week, I drove by the first house I remember living in. It looks somewhat shabby now.

I've spent the past few days trying to decide what that ought to mean to me.

We moved there in 1946, when I was 4. My father had just gotten out of the Navy after service as a Seabee in the South Pacific during World War II. Ten years later, our family, like so many others, moved to the suburbs as part of the "white flight" that followed the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

When I was a kid, there were red azaleas along the front of the house, a boxwood hedge surrounded the front yard (how I hated having to help trim that hedge), a huge maple tree with a swing dominated the back yard, and deep purple hydrangeas flanked the house.

My mother loved gardening (something I never appreciated until I had a house of my own). Her brick-edged flower borders stretched the length of both sides of the back yard, with tulips, daffodils, irises and lilies in the spring, followed by sweet williams, petunias, hollyhocks and verbena in the summer.

Our next-door neighbors, the Adamses, had a damson plum tree that overhung the fence, and we kids would enjoy those plums right from the tree until we got thoroughly sick of them. My mother would make damson preserves every year.

The Schwartzes, who lived on the other side, kept bantam chickens in a coop on the fenceline -- one rooster and one hen. Mr. Schwartz would sometimes let them out to peck in his yard and let me come over and play with them. They were quite tame, and neither Mr. Schwartz nor the bantam chickens seemed to mind my chasing them. As I recall it, I was not yet quite old enough to catch them.

Across the alley behind us, a neighbor had a grape arbor that we were allowed to ravage when the fruit was ripe. The dark purple grapes were a treat on a hot summer day. Running barefoot across the alley one afternoon, I stepped on a nail that went right through my foot. It hurt like hell, but the rest of the neighborhood kids kept asking me to take off the bandage so they could see the hole. It was my morsel of glory that summer.

Essie Taylor and her husband lived two doors down from us, on the corner. Essie -- she encouraged us to call her by her first name -- was my favorite neighbor. Childless herself, she seemed to me like a doting, loving aunt. I adored her dog, a liver-spotted pointer named Pierre, whose tail would begin a frenzied wagging each time he saw me. I spent many a splendid summer afternoon playing with Pierre in Essie's back yard.

Later, when I was about 8, we got a black cocker spaniel of our own, and he was my boon companion. My father named him Mr. Boh, after the character in the TV commercials for National Bohemian beer. My mother used to clip his long ears up with a clothespin when he ate to keep them out of his food dish.

(Mr. Boh, an enthusiastic if indiscriminate epicure, once ate an entire box of Crayolas that my sister had left on the back porch -- 48 crayons, including aquamarine and cotton-candy pink. To the extreme delight of me and my friends, Mr. Boh left a rainbow of colorful deposits in the yard for several days.)

I had an abundance of playmates my age. Buddy lived across the street. When we were old enough to ride bicycles, he and I would roam far and wide through Fairmount, from the Luck's Field playground to the edge of Woodville. In the winter, we'd make snowmen in my front yard and throw snowballs -- and stay outside until our fingers grew numb and our lips turned blue.

Just down the block was my friend Jerry. His father had died in Normandy during the war. His mother had remarried, and Jerry had a younger brother who was about my sister's age. Jerry and I would ride our bikes over to Oakwood Cemetery, about a mile away, and catch tadpoles in the creek under the old stone bridge and explore the markers on the graves of Confederate soldiers. The dates on their gravestones seemed to us to belong to a faraway time when the world was much younger.

In the hot summers, after dark, we'd all gather under the weak glow of the streetlight at the end of our block and catch fireflies in mayonnaise jars or play ring-a-levio, a highly stylized and complex game of tag that involved competing teams. The game would end with cries of "olly olly oxen free" as our parents began to call out into the night for us to come home.

Remembering those days brings to mind a time when the world was simultaneously finite and limitless. The future was as far away as the stars, and the adults all seemed to be wise and loving guardians.

As I look at our old house now, with its front windows boarded up and the yard unkempt, I know once more the truth of what Thomas Wolfe wrote: You can't go home again.

The physical space might remain. The time, however, no longer exists. Except in memories.

But the passage of more than half a century and a picture of a boarded-up house cannot dim my recollections of that childhood full of golden light and freedom from all responsibility.

Don't pet the cat, Donnie

A grocery store still exists today at the corner of 22nd and X streets in Fairmount. (Don Dale 2011 photo)

I've loved pets all my life. But when I was about 5 years old I met a cat who didn't love me back.

She was a grocery-store cat, not exactly feral, but accustomed to making her own way through life, living behind the small grocery store about two blocks from my house. The shop's owner fed her, giving her scraps from the butcher counter at the back of the store, and made sure she had fresh water. Her life, though, was spent completely outdoors.

She was a sleek, fat tabby, her glossy coat reflecting the fact that she ate well. She had probably lived there since before I was born, and my mom always stopped when we saw her behind the store to let me pet her.

On one fine, sunny, spring morning, my mom was chatting with the store's proprietor when I piped up: "Where's the kitty-cat?"

"She's taking care of her new kittens. She's with them out back in a cardboard box. But don't try to pet her, because she's very protective of her babies."

As we left the store to walk home, my mom holding my hand, I begged her to please let me see the kittens. "Okay," she told me, "but you mustn't try to pet them or she'll bite you."

The cardboard box was just outside the back door of the store, and inside was the beautiful tabby cat and her kittens, their eyes not yet open. Before my mom could stop me, I reached down to pet them.

The mama cat bit me good, quick as a flash -- right through the web between my thumb and my index finger. Her sharp teeth went all the way through.

My mom told me much later that I didn't cry, but that my eyes got as big as saucers as blood dripped from my hand. We hurried home, and she cleaned the wound with peroxide and applied iodine and a bandage. I was lucky that the wound didn't get infected.

I have been bitten again by animals since then. I snagged my first job at the age of 16 working for a veterinarian. One of my duties was to hold dogs and cats while they were being examined, and a few expressed their extreme displeasure by chomping down on me. I quickly learned to wear the heavy leather gloves -- more like gauntlets -- that were always available. Those bites are long forgotten.

But I'll never forget the grocery-store cat who bit me good when I was 5 years old.

I don't get back to Fairmount much any more. It's a long way from my house on Northside to the old neighborhood. But an errand took me back last week, and I couldn't resist driving by the old grocery store.

And the memories came flooding back. Memories of buying kites, grape Popsicles, Yoo-hoos and Duncan yo-yos. Memories of the colorful feed sacks stacked in a corner. Memories of that long-handled clamping device that the grocer used to fetch items from the top shelf behind the counter.

And memories of being bitten by that beautiful cat who lived just outside the store's back door.

A walk with Carol

Carol Amato

I came close to quitting my job at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1995.

Carol Amato, the museum's Chief Operating Officer, talked me in from the ledge.

The full story of why I was set on leaving VMFA is a long one, so I'll try to reduce it to a paragraph. A public promise that had been made to me by the museum's director was broken by one of her subordinates without her knowledge. I found out about the broken promise in a public situation. My supervisor's supervisor, an assistant to the director, made the surprise announcement, in a meeting of senior staff, that a special project had been completed. The project, which I had earlier been promised I would be involved with, was the creation of a videotape to be sold in the museum's shop in connection with a major Faberge touring exhibition in 1996.

The surprise announcement of the broken promise infuriated me. I was as angry as I had ever been during my time at VMFA.

After the meeting I confronted the assistant director, privately, in his office, and vented my fury. I called him a coward, a charlatan and a few other names that don't bear repeating. It was a short but turbulent meeting in which all he could do was stammer a response that he, himself, knew was inadequate.

I left his office, my fury unabated, and headed for Carol's office. Her assistant, perhaps correctly interpreting the look on my face, said Carol was in her office and I should go right in.

Carol was sitting at her desk. "What's wrong?" she asked.

I told her about the promise, which she remembered the director making. She told me that she didn't realize it had been broken, and that she was certain the director didn't know either.

She got up from behind her desk, put her arm around my shoulder and said, "Let's take a walk."

For the next 20 minutes, we walked -- from the museum's staff entrance along Grove Avenue to Sheppard Street, over to Kensington Avenue, then to the Boulevard and back to Grove Avenue, almost a mile. I talked, and Carol listened. She didn't interrupt or ask questions. She just listened.

When I eventually ran out of steam, she told me I had two choices as she saw it: I could quit and throw away a career, or I could stay and take solace in the fact that, although I had been wronged, I was a valued member of the VMFA staff. She encouraged me to take the latter option.

That, to me, was the essence of Carol's managerial style. She could quickly assess a situation and articulate alternative courses. Above all, and throughout her lengthy career in state government, she put people first. "The people who work here are the museum's most important and valuable resource," she often said.

Carol's skills with people were her greatest talent. An arm around a shoulder. "Let's take a walk." Showing respect by listening. Those things might seem inconsequential, but they were powerful tools in her kit.

She came by those skills in more than 40 years in state government. Governor Linwood Holton appointed her as a Commonwealth Intern in 1970. She served as Commissioner of the Department of Labor and Industry under three governors before becoming COO at VMFA.

Two hours after Carol and I walked and talked, the assistant director came to my office and abjectly apologized. A few days later I got a handwritten note from the director expressing deep regret that her promise to me had been broken by a subordinate without her knowledge.

Carol's doing? I don't know, but I suspect so.

I did decide to take the latter course. I stayed at the museum for nine more years before retiring. Carol remained a close friend, and my respect for her grew as I watched how she handled other staff challenges -- and there were many.

Within a few years, the assistant director had moved on, as they say, to pursue "other opportunities."

My dear friend Carol Amato, who retired from VMFA last year, died of pancreatic cancer June 1. She was 66 years old. I will miss her a lot.

Coffee with Cassie

(Don Dale photo 2011)

I make no apologies at all. Call me a simpering, sentimental ailurophile. I plead guilty, your honor.

I signed up for Snapfish because a friend of mine who lives in Louisville shares pictures of his vacations and his two spaniels via the site. Now I get emails from Snapfish with offers "you can't refuse."

I've been quite capable of refusing them.

But I got an offer a few weeks back that I really couldn't turn down. The company said it would send me a free coffee mug with a picture of my choice on it. All I needed to do was submit the image and pay the postage.

I sent off an image of Cassie. A week later I got the mug you see above. I love it. (The postage was negligible.)

So each morning now I have coffee with Cassie.

Pretty cool, huh?