| Wondering why we don’t produce more of our food |
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By: By MIKE WEST Managing Editor
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Mike West
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Ahhhhhhhh, the holiday season is upon us.
There, I said it (without an expletive deleted.)
Before all of the hustle and bustle completely kick in, it’s time for a little pre-turkey day reflection.
Thanksgiving remains one of the most distinctively American holidays. That’s not to say that just about every culture and every nation has some sort of day of thanks, but few of them celebrate the way we do by overeating, watching football and then going shopping.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not knocking any of those activities. The average Thanksgiving menu contains some of the most beautiful words in the English language. I love them all, but I could “survive” on mashed potatoes and dressing (stuffing) alone. Pumpkin pie?
And I am usually too busy dozing to catch much of the football unless a particularly loud snort from some of my fellow dozers awakens me.
Call me perverse, but there is a certain fun and adventure about getting up at dawn the following morning just for the right to stand in line to purchase a special gift at an amazing price.
Last year, ol’ Hammerhead was spotted in line with a pull-my-finger Elmo. He was looking as proud as punch ... or maybe he was just a bit punch drunk from navigating pre-dawn bumper-to-bumper traffic on Old Fort Parkway.
“I am gonna list it on eBay for about a thousand bucks,” he explained as he pushed and shoved out of sight.
Except for the occasional exception, most shoppers behave on Black Friday (they call it that because the heavy shopping of the day takes many retailers out of the red and puts them soundly in the black profit-wise.) However, no holds are barred if a bullheaded shopper tries to cut line. Things can get ugly fast, but usually the rebukes of the shoppers who have waited hours quickly prevail.
One thing that makes this Thanksgiving different than most is the high cost of oil, which in many cases, has pushed up prices at area supermarkets. It is that development that’s making me think a bit.
Not so many years ago most of the food for Thanksgiving feasts was locally produced and not shipped in from across the country. That even included ol’ Tom Turkey in many cases. A local farmer raised him and you bought him at some place like Jones Locker. The green beans were home-grown and canned or frozen. The turnip greens came straight from the garden. The potatoes came from the cellar where they had been chilling since they were dug. Even the corn meal for the dressing was ground by a miller at DeRio or Readyville Mill.
No chemicals except for that salt and smoke used to preserve that country ham and you had to buy the cranberries at the market, because they couldn’t be grown locally.
The fare was plainer, perhaps less diverse, but hearty. Transportation costs were nil in Rutherford County with its agriculturally based economy.
Naturally, the situation has changed, but it makes you wonder how things got so turned around. Farmers’ profits have disappeared thanks to the cost of oil, transportation and those petro-chemical pesticides. Consumers’ costs have exploded as well as we all get caught up in the cycle of oil dependence.
It would be in all of our best interest to reverse this trend. That’s not to say everyone should be living in a hay bale house and driving a car that runs on recycled cooking oil. I don’t claim to have any answers, but I am thinking and that’s a start.
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