As a child I was always surprised to hear one of my grandfather’s farmstand customers refer to him as “Mr. Atwood.”  

“Mr. Atwood” invested Grampy with a commonness meant for men who strode down sidewalks.  Grampy’s hard-worked knees sent him a little too far to left and right with each step, as if he was always maneuvering the ragged stalks of a shorn cornfield.  “Mr. Atwood” made him seem like a man who read the sports pages over coffee; Grampy read signs.  He was a farmer-mystic who watched everything from license plate numbers to the skies for signs that the world was ending or that he would suddenly become rich.  

But he had a farmer’s dignity, which meant he conserved words as if they cost something; he spent with his body, massive hands and a large stomach barely contained by poplin gray work pants, too many years fueled by his wife’s strawberry pies. 

No minister knew God better than Grampy.  Elijah - THE Elijah, the prophet from the Old Testament - literally sat beside Grampy and whispered things to him, which Grampy then broadcast to us.  “Elijah just told me we should all be watching the Middle East for the future of the world…” (This was circa 1967.)

Elijah had “come to” Grampy when he was a young man, and taught him the Old Testament.  No one in my family understood more than that about this storyline, but I witnessed plenty of dinner table conversations interrupted by comments from the invisible Elijah.  God was probably on his knees furiously weeding one of Grampy’s long strawberry rows, letting Elijah work the party.  

Elijah also provided Grammy and Grampy with inspired numbers to bet on at the track.  Greyhound racing made up the third leg of the stool upon which Grampy leaned:  farming, God, and the dogs.  Harvest from forty something acres of rocky Newton, NH land kept a thin layer of money in the bank.  Elijah and the dogs made up the difference, or didn’t.  There were losses.  

Grampy’s first name was “Ellery.”  His father - my great-grandfather - was named “Moses.”  Moses seemed to have been a scoundrel who bottled “Atwood Bitters” as the medicine for any ailment, particularly the ailment of needing a drink.  Dusty Atwood’s Bitters bottles, turquoise glass with “Moses Atwood’s Bitters” in raised letters down one of eight sides, can still be found in boxes of mismatched restaurant plates or on a cobwebbed window ledge in lesser antique stores.  

Grampy didn’t drink; the Old Testament and the greyhounds were all the refreshment Ellery ever needed.  And the man could grow things: fat, grassy asparagus, jewel-like strawberries, yellow corn whose kernels exploded in sweetness, tomatoes better than the New Jersey ones, and flowers. 

My cousins and I all posed for family pictures before gleaming tomatoes at “The Stand,” as it was always called, the farmstand where - besides the kitchen - Grammy ruled. We also posed in front of the path to the farmhouse, always lined in snapdragons and gladiolus stalks. (cousins pictured here from the top: Leslie, Susan, and Meryl Atwood, also knows as Biscuit, Bear, and Beans.)

Cadillacs and wood-paneled station wagons driven by the well-dressed ladies who called him “Mr. Atwood” lined up on the road by the stand all summer.  I think the “Mr.” these women reserved for Grampy was really born from respect for his harvest. I was only five to seven years old, and I didn’t like tomatoes and strawberries, but I heard the reverence..  They knew nothing of my grandfather’s eccentricity; they knew him only for his asparagus, strawberries, corn and tomatoes, and I heard worship in those ladies’ words.   

My question today is this:  where are the asparagus, strawberries, corn and tomatoes?  My grandfather struggled, certainly. He farmed in Southern New Hampshire, not famous for its black, rich soil, but he grew masterpiece versions of these four crops, versions people drove long distances to purchase.  

Why are local crops today mostly kohlrabi and watermelon radishes?  Where is the ravishing deliciousness in that?  I remember my grandmother’s kitchen in late August filled with clouds of steam from an enormous kettle of boiling corn.  She would then pile the yellow ears onto a platter, plunk entire sticks of butter on top to melt over all, and that - along with platters of sliced tomatoes also the size of platters -  was dinner for all the cousins and their parents.  We were bound together over the pure deliciousness of Grampy’s corn and tomatoes in that meal.

New England doesn’t get a lot of deliciousness; the seasons are short and the land works best for wild blueberries and blackberries, but Mr. Atwood - in spite of his whacky ideas - could do this.  My cousin would credit Grampy’s free-wheeling use of DDT, but would that really account for all that flavor?  Is it really too hard to grow these crops without pesticides?  Maybe.  

Ellery Atwood’s farmland was sold off years ago after he died in a car accident in 1979 at the age of 81.  My aunt -  only months ago -  sold the farmhouse.  In this history - more recent than ancient -  a rough, bow-legged man successfully farmed (not organically) on ordinary acreage, and lip-sticked women spoke the words “Mr. Atwood’s strawberries” in veneration.  

What changed besides the pesticides?  Did we change?  Did development destroy that much farmland, or did we simply forget that it really is possible to grow these things in New England?   Did the fact that we began to expect more, that we want tomatoes all year long, ultimately give us less? 

I welcome answers.