The tomato
festival was a big hit with the local towns people. Of course they had never
seen a tomato before, they had not even seen anything red before and to eat it
was a pure satanic delight. For this was the land of the righteous and anything
and everything that could be in some way related to the devil was strictly
outlawed and abandoned centuries ago, including all shades of the color red. In
fact the color wheels in High School art class had only two primaries and one
secondary color, the color brown was nearly impossible to duplicate in the
class, and orange and purple were relegate to nature alone. (In fact this lead
to many disputes in later centuries about the exact nature of brown and some
went so far as to hypothesizes a third primary that made orange and purple the
two additional secondary colors which were often seen in nature but not in art.
This line of reasoning then lead to an ironic twist, because those theorist
were often burnt at the stake and as the red and orange flames rose up their
feet it all began to make sense, this was one of the few times where fire (and
red) were seen as a tool of righteousness and not one of the devil.)
But then one day a
traveling sales man, with a surplus of tomatoes to move before they rotted in
the trucks and docks of the co-op for which he worked, entered the town. He was
a forward thinking and very modern type of man. The girls swooned at the sight
of his black bolo hat. Women wanted him and men wanted to be him. He was
slicker then a duck in a rain storm and all that other jazz which made him real
cool. He could talk a good game and with the Bible in one hand and a plump
tomato in another he was able to convince the great, great, great, great
decedents of those original pietists that the tomato, although red, was still a
creation by God and ordained as good, was great to eat and excellent to have
with pasta (which had been rather stale of taste over the last few centuries).
It brought much need vitamins and topped out a bacon and lettuce sandwich very
well.
The town nearly
rioted because of the color red, some agreed with the salesman and wanted the
tomatoes to pour into the town. Other, more zealous of tradition and right
thinking and all that, people refused and wanted to run the man out of town.
The frosting on the cake was the fact that a tomato began as green and turned
yellow and then red by the rays of the sun. Here was the symbolic making of a
theological shift. The trinity of colors of blue and yellow making green
combined with the sun, the son, the light, the warmth of the heavens poured out
to create this jewel. But others saw a different symbol, a crafty snake
offering a tempting but forbidden fruit. The symbolism, either way, was too
much. All wanted to partake. For to err, to fall, is human. It is the nature of
the creature, even centuries of right living could not breed out the fact that
humanity craved the passion of life, that which was forbidden. Now the full
circle was complete: peace, warmth and passion; blue, yellow and red; the
trinity was completed and every range of emotion and every shade of color
became available to this imagine-less town. Riot was subdued but passion to
created, to flourish, to build, to spring forth, was unleashed and the tomato
festival captured that very essence.
Copyright 2012 David Corbet
