The holy trinity

Summer’s best, plus this week’s shareables: a legendary sportswriter, Meryl Streep's glasses, a '70s classic, and more

No one is ever gonna hire me as a food photographer

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes

— Guy Clark

Last weekend we drove down to our favorite farm stand, the Bush-N-Vine just outside York, SC. We go down there every year about this time, hoping to hit the harmonic convergence of fresh tomatoes, sweet corn and peaches.

This year we showed up at just the right time, especially for the peaches. We wait for the freestones to come in, because the pits pop out so clean, and these freestones were perfect—firm enough to last a few days, but ripe enough to eat right away. We bought two pecks (four dry gallons), cut up a bunch for the freezer, and have plowed through the rest basically every meal since.

At least three times this week I’ve had tomato sandwiches for lunch (Duke’s, a little seasoned salt, perfect, no notes). Yesterday we had the sandwiches, plus the peaches, plus the corn on the cob with a little butter and black pepper. I have now settled on this as my last meal, should I end up on death row.

You can get reasonable versions of most fruits and vegetables at the grocery store—but not corn, peaches and tomatoes. The difference between a store-bought tomato and one just off the vine is the difference between gazing at an aquarium and snorkeling in the Caribbean.

But it’s more than the taste for me. It’s the memory.

We had a big backyard garden when I was growing up. No peaches, but every year, in between the okra and butter beans and and yellow squash, we harvested bushels of Better Boy tomatoes and Silver Queen corn. When Alix and I were just starting out, we had a garden, too. One year the corn came in huge and the next year it was the tomatoes. We still tell the story about how I went out one morning and picked 111 tomatoes before work. It was Alix’s day off so I left them with her. She spent the day blanching tomatoes in one pot and cooking down sauce in another and chopping and canning and spattering. When I got home, the kitchen looked like the scene of a triple murder.

We ate on those tomatoes all winter long.

Not all of us grow up farming or gardening. But most of us don’t have to go back too far into our family trees to find people who grew their own food, either to make a living or just to put something fresh on the table. It’s hard work, all that tilling and weeding and harvesting. But on the other end there’s a perfect ear of corn, or a peach so good you can taste the sun.

We savor every bite, make little moaning noises, let the juices run. And then we cut into another one.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. My other newsletter this week was a few words about our anniversary.

2. My weekly for WFAE was about the endless summer storms, in the clouds and otherwise.

3. For years Gary Smith was the best sportswriter in the world, probably the best magazine writer in the world, and maybe, for a little piece of time, the best writer in the world. I can also testify, from spending a few times with him over the years, that he’s a wonderful guy. It was so good to catch up with him via this piece in Sports Illustrated.

4. Most every writer has a favorite Gary Smith piece—he has a good two dozen that are absolute classics. The one that gets me every time is his profile of a race walker who couldn’t slow down. I’d submit the last paragraph of this story as the greatest kicker of all time.

5. DOG NEWS: While I work on my book, I’m devoting this slot to dog stories. This week: Old, ugly, decrepit and dying dogs—and the Colorado man who loves them.

6. Bonus CAT NEWS: I really enjoyed this episode of the Memory Palace podcast on a cat that found itself in the middle of history. This piece has a great kicker, too.

7. What gorgeous design in this New York Times piece on Meryl Streep and her glasses.

8. A love story to another one of my favorite summer pleasures: fried okra.

9. We blew right through all 10 episodes of THE LINCOLN LAWYER, the series based on the Michael Connelly books (and different from the movie with Matthew McConaughey). The series moved fast and kept me guessing and got me invested in the characters. It was especially good to see Neve Campbell back on the screen.

10. Stumbled on this recent video of Al Stewart doing his ‘70s hit “Year of the Cat” and thoroughly enjoyed it. Al looks like he wandered over from the bank at the end of his shift. It’s great.

See y’all next week, everybody.