Written by: Ace Johnson

“One night after football practice it was late, dark, cold and my two buddies and I had no ride. It was 6 miles home, so we started walking. It was fall, we’d had a hard practice and boy! Were we ever hungry! As we walked, we discussed just how hungry we were. About 3 miles down the road was that fruit stand–Mr. Goin always had lots of apples out for sale. When we got to that fruit stand it was pitch black out, but we each felt around until we got a plump apple. We grabbed those apples and took off running down the hill, up the next, down the next hill to Chehulpum Creek. Time to slow down and sink our teeth into those succulent apples.  Ugh! Green tomato! We had each grabbed a green tomato. Mr. Goin sold them to people for pickling and canning.

“Later in high school I started dating Mr. Goin’s daughter. Still later, we married. We’ve been married almost 37 years. Sometimes one pays a pretty high price for a green tomato.”