It
happens once a year, it takes place at our local rural (one-clerk) post office,
and it’s as inevitable as rain that it’ll occur simultaneously to The Peanut
Gallery bringing in tubs of the last holiday orders to be mailed before
Xmas.
I’m
talkin’ Tomato Day … and if you have no clue what THAT means, you likely don’t
live rurally.
A little fun at tomato pickin’ time…
It’s a
years-old tradition for local Crystal Clarity Tomato Farm to thank their
customers with a special jar of home-farmed tomato sauce straight from the
fields (uh – the tomatoes, not the sauce) at Xmas.
All 100
customers.
You may
think 100 customers is a drop in the proverbial profit bucket; but when it comes
to Tomato Day – it’s simply overwhelming.
Picture
it: 100 packages lovingly hand-lettered, each holding a single fragile jar of
sparkling sauce.
Each
requiring special postal attention and handling. By my calculations, that’s at
least 300 minutes of work (…find
X, where X = 1 jar x Y [3 minutes].)
100
packages evoking discussion of local history and color, eccentric customer
personalities, satisfying gossip, and hours of delightful reminiscence during
the careful handling process.
TPG
invariably walks in with his (comparatively paltry) unexciting two whole tubs of
JUST enough mail orders to provoke the “you’ll just have to wait” response from
postmistress Roz, who by now is literally knee-deep in Tomato
Sauce.
A
little knowledge, however, is a dangerous thing: should any of our customers
complain of tomato stains, for example, we’ll know exactly whom (or, more
specifically, what) to implicate
in the matter:
Tomato
Day holiday festivities at the local Valley Ford Post
Office.
It’s
the happening place to be,
pre-Xmas!
Buona
sera!
And –
HAPPY TOMATO DAY!
PS:
And, let it be known that there has NEVER been a tomato stain on any of our Xmas
shipments – thus supporting the fact that those 300 minutes of postal processing
is TIME WELL SPENT.
TPG.
