This is fun. One day, I came into my classroom, and a bottle of soap awaited me. Later on, I received this email:
"But I did not really tell you the full story of the soap. There is actually a very strong family connection to the product.
My great great great great grandfather, William Salmon, was a relatively famous herbalist and is credited with first spotting tomatoes
growing wild in America (South Carolina). He was on a business venture
at the time but was so fascinated by the discovery, he brought back
several vines to show his family. In a letter to his mother, he later
described them as: “soft red gems.”
In that same letter, he explained how the tomatoes
lost their redness by the time he got home, but he wondered if God
would, “be pleased to bring this bright fruit back to life with these
few remaining seeds.” The story is that he dried them out, and planted
them in his backyard in rural Illinois. Within months, he had
cultivated a small tomato farm (which is still in existence to this day). Walkup Heritage Farm & Gardens:
Anyway,
the farm started small (as all farms do), and at first, he simply
shared them with friends and neighbors in town. But word spread fast,
and because the vines spread fast too, his Illinois town became a hotbed
for tomato growth, as the locals perfected the
processes of growth and distribution. (Fun fact: there is still a
small sports Park named: Tomaso in Crystal Lake, IL. It was a
misspelled on the property deed and was so named with this official
misnomer. A sign just outside the Park entrance reads: “You Say Tomato, I say Tomaso…”)
There is a big gap in our family's tomato-history,
but I know the farm survived a lot. A cannonball from the Civil Warm
still sits in one of our fields (I plowed around it growing up).
Grandpa (who never stopped telling stories) would not even talk about
the Great Depression years. Fast forward to 1968. My dad inherited the
farm (and a convertible 65 Mustang that grandpa stored in the garage).
I grew up with that car. With those fields. Playing in them. Working
too. Throwing the "over-ripes” at cars cruising down highway 14.
Smelling my fingers after pinching the fruit from the vines. I loved
the smell.
So taken by it was I, that I would
sometimes bring an “over-ripe” into the shower and mash it into my hair
as shampoo. Don’t judge! I planted a vine by my bed, and drifting off
to sleep, I let the wind blow the fragrance across my covers. It was
as comforting as mom’s perfume. As dad’s Sunday morning pancakes. My
senior year in high school, I had the chance to visit New York City for
the first time. I visited Hunter College, and while there, I stumbled
upon a lecture hall that gave me the lack of resolution now wired into
my very fabric.
There was a guest speaker who
worked in the scent-making industry. He talked about manufacturing
skunk smells for the government (they considered this non-lethal method
of chemical warfare for use in interrogation). He told about a rich
heiress outside of Paris who hired his lab services to recreate the
smell of her wedding bouquet. He discussed the Holy Grail of scents: a
new car smell (apparently, it is the most illusive of scents). And
that was my first visceral connection - the Mustang’s leather interior.
The joy of breathing in the backseat. But before I could settle into
that memory, I wanted to jump to my feet, right there in the middle of
the room to announce my question.
His lecture went on 15 painful minutes before I could ask. My hand was the first and only to go up, “Have you done tomatoes?”
I
expected a simple “yes” or “no” - but he paused instead. Didn’t say
anything for a solid 5 seconds – he just looked at me, as if he knew.
Like he wondered if I knew. I did not know, and once he could tell, he
gave a playful cover up, “that’s a longer story than we have time for
today.” And before I could tell him I had time, he had called on the
2nd hand in the air.
While still feeling the
slap on my cheek and jaw, I opened my laptop and tapped in his name.
Even as I typed, my brain started attaching the letter-chain to
childhood. A moment when my mom and dad talked in the kitchen all night
while I only half slept on our overstuffed sofa. The only time I
remembered hearing my dad yell out in the field. The fog separated me
from the history, but I knew it was real. And not good. Google had now
returned my result, but I was staring to the front of the room, above
the man, at the clock on the wall. The bell pulled me back down, and
there it was, the first result:
“David E.
Sprott - Washington State University professor explores connection
between interactive effects of ambient scent in retail."
Sprott. I couldn’t place the name, but when I did, I felt like I needed to throw up.
My
father had grown up friendly to all the nearby farms, but there was one
exception. "The Orla, Sprott, and Kiely Farm.” He used to toss out
tiny comments and curses as we drove. “The cheats.” “Damn ‘em.” “They
are no better than the maggots in the crops." One day, he half-joking
said, “Orla, Sprott, & Keilly…They sound more like a law firm than a
farm.”
My mom’s reply is what made me remember dad’s comment, “Honey, they are as hungry and dishonest as any lawyer. Let it die.”
My
mom never said anything bad about anyone. Except once. Except them.
And by the way my parents said nothing more for the next few hours, I
knew it was serious. Real.
I looked up sharply from my screen – the classroom now empty around me.
But
there was a number on the board. A phone number. It had not been
there during his speech. I would have remembered its obvious placement,
and everything in me knew the number was for me. It is in my wallet
today, and I have never called it...
- Nathan"
He invited me to call sometime. I was rushing to classes and yard duty and such that day, but I bought it! He got me!
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