The Tomato Plants

On New Years 1978, I moved to Detroit. While my house in Baltimore was for sale, my new job had started. I moved into the Art Center Apartments, next to the school, on a month to month lease. Years later, we purchased that building for student housing, but at the time it was an old midtown apartment building which was probably quite luxurious in its day. As a single resident, my family staying in Baltimore until our house was sold, I needed very little.
There were built in shelves for clothing inside a very large walk in closet. There were built in book shelves between the living room and the dining room. My friends in Ann Arbor had loaned me a large folding bed and helped me build a night stand. I borrowed a table and four chairs from our school cafeteria, just next door to the building.

I brought with me a few items including a small, black and white TV, a small vacuum and some pots and pans. I needed nothing to continue life as pretty normal.

In the spring of that year, we sold the Baltimore house and found a house in Birmingham. Everything was set for a move in at the end of the summer when the current owners of the Birmingham house found one they wanted to buy and had to leave their house. We struck a deal, and I would rent the Birmingham house for two or three months until our sale was completed, and at that point we completed the purchase, sometime in August. So, I left the Art Center Apartments at the end of May, after five months, and moved to the new house.

I moved in all my current borrowed furnishings, but lost the built-ins etc., and was living sparsely, in a much larger situation. I had a lot of space and had inherited a pool table and player piano, too big and heavy to move out of the house. Also, I had a swimming pool, which I needed to learn to maintain anyway. So while I had little, I had recreation galore.

My family did eventually move in late in the fall, but I was alone for the summer.

Late in the season, I was in the Dammen's hardware store in Birmingham, and they were closing out remaining plant stock. In the plants there was a flat of tomato plants way past their prime. The flat was $2, and I figured, as an old “sort of” gardener, I could get one or two of them to grow and I might get a tomato or two out of it. I would be so proud! Alone, in my suburban house, I could produce a tomato!

I planted 40 of the 42 plants available to me as two were beyond saving. I carefully watered and weeded and lo and behold, they all flourished!

That was the fall I learned to make tomato sauce!



Potato, Potato, Tomato, Tomato Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (I just had to do it!)