August 1, 2025
Just Saying…
The Great Tomato Wars of Augusts Past
By Q.C. Jones
The Midwest is the “home grown tomato belt” and the Quad Cities is the shiny belt buckle adorning this bright red belt. We, like every region, have our own late-summer ritual. We don’t run with raging bulls, burn giant puppets, or as Peter Rowan would say spend our days “harvesting the sweet sinsemilla.” Our tradition is quieter, stickier, and perhaps even more nutritious. Join me as we explore the history of the August tomato war.
Tomato season sneaks up on you. First, a few cherry tomatoes ripen quietly on the vine. Maybe a big boy or two sits there, sunning itself into blush-worthy perfection. You slice them, salt them, and eat them still warm from the garden. You think, “This is summer. This is heaven.”
But by the third week of August, things begin to change. What once felt like a gift from nature becomes a nuisance with a viny stalk. Suddenly, everyone with a garden and a greenish colored thumb is trying to surreptitiously unload a beer carton full of tomatoes like it’s a radioactive time bomb. No one wants to be wasteful, and everyone knows it’s not neighborly to say no. World War Tomato begins.
It’s not a shooting war. It’s more of a Cold War arms race, carried out on alleyways and porch steps. People show up on Saturday night not with wine, but with two dozen vaguely bruised Romas. Entire social relationships are held hostage until you accept a mysterious grocery sack of garden overgrowth.
I remember the day someone brought a big wooden crate of tomatoes to my dad’s Texaco station. They meant well, of course, and thought they were offering something useful to the crew. Dad took one look and said, “Well, I guess lunch is figured out.” That week, they had BLTs, peanut butter and tomato sandwiches, and something that might’ve been called salsa if you squinted hard enough.
By Friday, Dad broke out in hives. Turned out he had a mild allergy that only kicked in after about his fifteenth tomato of the week. That didn’t stop him the next summer. He just kept a little jar of calamine lip balm in the glovebox and applied it liberally in August.
My paternal grandma had one unbreakable rule: Do not waste tomatoes. In her mind, wasting a tomato was just one step removed from burning the family Bible or flushing
dollar bills. She knew how to can, sauce, juice, or preserve anything red. If she caught you sneaking a few soft ones to the trash, you could expect a long lecture on the poor
starving children in Ethiopia. On a side note, research indicates that people in Northern Africa like tomatoes but only in moderation.
That memory must’ve stuck, because when my wife and I got married, my parents gave us a pressure cooker the size of a medium garbage can so we could continue the family
tradition. They said it was for canning tomatoes and surviving on love. We used it often during our early years together. It made a noise like a steam locomotive, and the kitchen smelled like a Bloody Mary factory had exploded. Happily, I can report that after a two-decade absence we found the pressure cooker in a far corner of our attic. There may be more tomato canning in our future yet.
But I’ll say this. Those jars of canned tomatoes came in handy. They made some mighty fine enchilada and spaghetti sauce, and once, in the dead of winter, I popped one open and just ate it with Triscuits while contemplating the snow piling up on the sidewalk. Tomatoes may be messy, but they can taste like sunshine when you need it most.
By Labor Day, the Midwestern tomato belt is over and done with tomatoes. People start looking suspiciously at neighbors holding Hy-Vee bags. They avoid eye contact at the farmer’s market. A mysterious box shows up on your porch, and our first thought isn’t “Who left this?” but “How many are in there, and have the ones in the refrigerator turned to moldy mush?”
Nowadays, folks post on Facebook, “Free tomatoes on my porch. Please take them before they rot.” It’s a modern twist on an ancient Quad Cities tradition, the late-summer tomato bomb.
If you find yourself knee-deep in Romas, Heirlooms, and something lumpy your cousin swears is just like Beefsteaks, don’t panic. Don’t waste them. Just remember, this too shall pass.
By October, the frost will have cleaned out your vines. Your neighbors will stop side-eying your doorbell, and we’ll go back to paying $3.99 a pound for tomatoes that taste like damp cardboard.
Let the tomato war begin.
Just saying…. QC Jones
