Dutch Supper: A Missing Chapter from the Potatoland Diaries
Last year, about this time, I was chucking seed potatoes with Jim and the girls. Though I still vividly recall the migraine and gut-ache that I associate with Jim's birthday and that horrific pudding dessert that Angela concocted, I'm half tempted to get out the Playtex gloves, the long underwear, the dust goggles, the sack lunch, and get back on the Spudnik that throwed me.
What's more, it will soon be Eastertide, which means time for the Dutch Supper -- an episode from Potatoland that I apparently neglected to relate right after it occurred. Possibly my energy was low.
It was just after the russett stampede. Shawna and I cleaned up after work and showed up at the Manhattan Christian school just in time for our boss, Jim, all scrubbed and rosy, to pay our admission to the gymnasium-full of wonders. Dutch folk music echoed over the murmer of community as plump children in wooden shoes performed proud, embarassed clomping dances. We followed Jim's lead and ferried our divided plastic trays around a staggering gauntlet of mashed vegetables.
In folding chairs at long tables, we tucked spoonfuls of mashed rutabaga, mashed potatoes, mashed carrots, mashed something green (wasn't there something green?) into ourselves until it hurt to breath. Duty-bound, driven by some unspoken familial challenge, we soldiered through pigs in a blanket, black bread with butter and piles of firm little black beans that looked like rabbit droppings covered with brown sugar and bacon drippings. I felt for all the world like an overfed Dutch baby, who, approached by another spoonful of mashed anything, might just relax my jaw and let it fall back out onto the plastic tablecloth.
We sucked at coffee in styrofoam cups and ventured back into the fray to fill a plate with desserts. What was the name of that Dutch exchange student who made the little pancakes? Riet? Something like that. What were those crazy little pancakes called? I'm sure they'd be good, with coffee, if you were pretty hungry. But their appeal was defeated by the unruly compost of starch-based muck that preceded them.
After all but interring ourselves in the heaviest food I have ever encountered, Shawna and I drove on to the Norris Hotsprings to stand in the scalding water and listen to a bluegrass band. We arrived around dusk, and nipped into the chilly changing room to stretch insufficient black swimming suits over our distended guts. (Well, I'm speaking for myself -- for all I know, Shawna considered her swimming suit sufficient -- and I'm just making a wild guess as to the state of her gut at the time.) As I descended the wide wooden stair, I noticed that the entire pool was lined with men. It was like being in some steamy meat market version of Cinderella.
After us came more women -- women in bikinis, women bearing beer bottles and big boobs, but that didn't deter a few lonely and persistent fellows from trying to pick Shawna and me up. It's a very strange feeling, having an apparently virile, if apparently unstable, man come onto you with unabashed hope while you secretly know that you are not only uninterested, but you are filled to the chin with mashed rutabagas. It was sad and funny at the same time.
If anybody wants to be my date for this year's Dutch supper, let me know. I'll be the one packing an insufficient swimming suit.
------------------------------------------------------
*The names in my diary have been changed for the sake of anonymity.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Potatoland Diaries - Chapter 11
Afterward
In retrospect, I have to confess that my potato-strewn path of glory ended on an ugly note.
I was horrified when I realized that some of the people I was working with were racists. The truck drivers who took our spuds away to distant fields were sometimes Hispanic, and one guy was black. I didn't think much about it, of course. I thought so little, in fact, that it took me days to realize that I was amidst some world-class xenophobes.
I was working away on the conveyor belt, and something was said. At first it completely went over my head, because it was so unexpected, it just came to my ears as nonsense.
One guy, I think it was Barry, the guy who looked out for rocks on the rollers, occasionally shouted out, "I'm gonna get a whip." Busy as I was with potatoes, and as much as Barry chattered, I just figured he was giving Angela a hard time or something. I thought it was a weird, abstract thing to be saying, but I'd always thought he was a bit odd, so I just ignored it.
Then later in the break shed, something else was said. At first, again, it nearly escaped my notice. Barry and some of the other guys started talking about the truck driver, referring to him as "Sugar Ray" and saying something about him coming to work in his pajamas.
I hadn't paid much attention to the truck drivers. They were usually pretty far away, doing things I didn't understand to their big, scary trucks. But I had noticed that the black truck driver wore a black dew rag on his head and long red basketball shorts. That's not clothing you see every day in Bozeman.
If you don't live in Montana, you have no idea what it's like to live in a place where practically everyone is white. Bozeman and the surrounding suburban sprawl is home to about 50,000 white folks. Statistically, it's 95.3% white, 1.5% Hispanic, 1.4% Native American and 1.2% multiracial, which leaves people of African descent sharing the remaining .5% with everyone else who falls into the "other" category. In other words, the entire black population of Bozeman could probably fit in my house.
So Barry and a couple of the other guys were talking, and I realized, suddenly, that they were talking about this black truck driver, calling him Sugar Ray. It irritated me, but they have a culture of picking on everyone, so I lumped it with the way they called one truck driver Tumbleweed, because of his puffy hair. Then suddenly, to my nausea, I realized that when Barry had been yelling "I'm gonna get a whip," he hadn't just been having Tourette's outbursts. He had been taunting this truck driver. It all started to piece together and I realized that that, and other things I had been tuning out, were classic, shitty, cowardly racism.
Needless to say, the minute I put it all together, I felt like strangling Barry. Obviously, he was afraid to face the man and tell him "I don't like you because you're black," so instead, he shouted taunts under the protection of the loudly running conveyor belt. He followed up with the stereotyped nickname, and other little jabs that could be swept away with a two-faced "we're just kidding you, can't you take a joke?"
The worst part was that while Jim, the father figure in our Family Affair, gingerly steered Barry from the subject, he didn't send Barry packing. I wanted him to stand up and punch Barry in the jaw, like John Wayne. I wanted him to defend the honor of this isolated community with ways that I had worked so hard to respect, despite their strangeness.
Of course, it occurred to me that Jim might think Barry was an idiot and an asshole who did deserve a good John Wayne punch, but weighed that knowledge against the shortage of experienced potato sorters available. Still, there was a raw spot in my mind that wondered if Jim was actually a racist, too. How could it be? A man so deeply faithful... I don't know much about religion, but if I understand Christianity at all, it's not supposed to make people hate their fellow man. Granted, I know it backfires a good share of the time, but I had hoped better of Jim's clan. I still do hope.
Still, I was sickened and saddened. I felt unwelcome and outnumbered. I didn't know whether to leave in a huff, confront Jim and insist that he have a talk with the group about racism and set down some ground rules for appropriate conversation, confront Barry personally (possibly by busting his car windows), or just remove my personal feelings and continue a passionless observation their foreign ways. Worse yet, I didn't like what my wishy-washyness said about me. If I wanted so much for Jim to stand up and be a hero for my ideals, why was I too small and too scared to do it myself?
The whole experience stripped away the magic fog from Potatoland. I saw that ignorance is never so isolated that it is harmless. I saw it, but I still didn't know what to do about it.
So, to my shame, instead of standing up and being the person I wish I were, I took the easy way out. I quietly culled myself from the load. I'd like to think that I'm worthy of being among the heart shaped potatoes. But I'm not so sure.
In retrospect, I have to confess that my potato-strewn path of glory ended on an ugly note.
I was horrified when I realized that some of the people I was working with were racists. The truck drivers who took our spuds away to distant fields were sometimes Hispanic, and one guy was black. I didn't think much about it, of course. I thought so little, in fact, that it took me days to realize that I was amidst some world-class xenophobes.
I was working away on the conveyor belt, and something was said. At first it completely went over my head, because it was so unexpected, it just came to my ears as nonsense.
One guy, I think it was Barry, the guy who looked out for rocks on the rollers, occasionally shouted out, "I'm gonna get a whip." Busy as I was with potatoes, and as much as Barry chattered, I just figured he was giving Angela a hard time or something. I thought it was a weird, abstract thing to be saying, but I'd always thought he was a bit odd, so I just ignored it.
Then later in the break shed, something else was said. At first, again, it nearly escaped my notice. Barry and some of the other guys started talking about the truck driver, referring to him as "Sugar Ray" and saying something about him coming to work in his pajamas.
I hadn't paid much attention to the truck drivers. They were usually pretty far away, doing things I didn't understand to their big, scary trucks. But I had noticed that the black truck driver wore a black dew rag on his head and long red basketball shorts. That's not clothing you see every day in Bozeman.
If you don't live in Montana, you have no idea what it's like to live in a place where practically everyone is white. Bozeman and the surrounding suburban sprawl is home to about 50,000 white folks. Statistically, it's 95.3% white, 1.5% Hispanic, 1.4% Native American and 1.2% multiracial, which leaves people of African descent sharing the remaining .5% with everyone else who falls into the "other" category. In other words, the entire black population of Bozeman could probably fit in my house.
So Barry and a couple of the other guys were talking, and I realized, suddenly, that they were talking about this black truck driver, calling him Sugar Ray. It irritated me, but they have a culture of picking on everyone, so I lumped it with the way they called one truck driver Tumbleweed, because of his puffy hair. Then suddenly, to my nausea, I realized that when Barry had been yelling "I'm gonna get a whip," he hadn't just been having Tourette's outbursts. He had been taunting this truck driver. It all started to piece together and I realized that that, and other things I had been tuning out, were classic, shitty, cowardly racism.
Needless to say, the minute I put it all together, I felt like strangling Barry. Obviously, he was afraid to face the man and tell him "I don't like you because you're black," so instead, he shouted taunts under the protection of the loudly running conveyor belt. He followed up with the stereotyped nickname, and other little jabs that could be swept away with a two-faced "we're just kidding you, can't you take a joke?"
The worst part was that while Jim, the father figure in our Family Affair, gingerly steered Barry from the subject, he didn't send Barry packing. I wanted him to stand up and punch Barry in the jaw, like John Wayne. I wanted him to defend the honor of this isolated community with ways that I had worked so hard to respect, despite their strangeness.
Of course, it occurred to me that Jim might think Barry was an idiot and an asshole who did deserve a good John Wayne punch, but weighed that knowledge against the shortage of experienced potato sorters available. Still, there was a raw spot in my mind that wondered if Jim was actually a racist, too. How could it be? A man so deeply faithful... I don't know much about religion, but if I understand Christianity at all, it's not supposed to make people hate their fellow man. Granted, I know it backfires a good share of the time, but I had hoped better of Jim's clan. I still do hope.
Still, I was sickened and saddened. I felt unwelcome and outnumbered. I didn't know whether to leave in a huff, confront Jim and insist that he have a talk with the group about racism and set down some ground rules for appropriate conversation, confront Barry personally (possibly by busting his car windows), or just remove my personal feelings and continue a passionless observation their foreign ways. Worse yet, I didn't like what my wishy-washyness said about me. If I wanted so much for Jim to stand up and be a hero for my ideals, why was I too small and too scared to do it myself?
The whole experience stripped away the magic fog from Potatoland. I saw that ignorance is never so isolated that it is harmless. I saw it, but I still didn't know what to do about it.
So, to my shame, instead of standing up and being the person I wish I were, I took the easy way out. I quietly culled myself from the load. I'd like to think that I'm worthy of being among the heart shaped potatoes. But I'm not so sure.
Monday, May 7, 2007
The Potatoland Diaries - Chapter 10
The potatoland diaries eulogy, May 7, 2007
"What happened?"
The potatoland diaries were cut sort in their starchy prime. Sadly, I got a real job (sort of) so my potato sorting life, along with the free time that its takes to blog about other people's lunch boxes up and dried on the vine. But hey, eight days. That's a hell of lot of potatoes.
"What happened?"
The potatoland diaries were cut sort in their starchy prime. Sadly, I got a real job (sort of) so my potato sorting life, along with the free time that its takes to blog about other people's lunch boxes up and dried on the vine. But hey, eight days. That's a hell of lot of potatoes.
Monday, April 2, 2007
The Potatoland Diaries - Chapter 9
DAY 8 — April 2, 2007
"Lunch boxes"
The men folk all have the same kind of lunchbox.
They are dark green, plastic coolers, about the right size for going on an overnight camp-out with three or four friends. And they have a really neat lid that holds a manly-looking metal thermos on top. The lunch boxes are often brought to them by their wives, well before coffee time, which happens after two or three loads of potatoes, around ten o'clock.
I never get tired of Jim saying "coffee time!" It's not just the promise of respite from the rumbling hoard, or the thrill of the carbohydrate-laden delights that Mare might serve -- I also like the way he says it. "Coffee time" sounds so 1950s to me. It's kind of refined, in a way. It implies a nice little home-baked spice cookie and a bit of innocent gossip.
It sounds like maybe I should fix my hair a bit (not that such a thing would be possible, since, A. I learned after the first day that you may as well wait to shower until AFTER you are caked in potato dirt and, B. for the past two hours my hair has been plastered down under a hat that I made out of a boiled wool sweater).
Anyway, "coffee time" sounds nice. "Break time" might imply cigarettes, small-scale gambling, going to the can, and possibly even sneaking a beer, but "coffee time" adds a layer of pink gingham to my world of dirt clods and tuberous aberrations.
Usually, like clockwork, one of the wives arrives doubly laden with a thermos-topped green lunch box and a steaming plate of cookies or something. (Do they use some instinctive wifely storm-sense to know which of them is bringing the baked goods, or do they call each other on the phone the night before?) But on the occasion when providence doesn't offer baked goods, the guys dig in their green lunch boxes for a piece of leftover cake, or whatever.
At lunch time, I watch the men get out their sandwiches. They usually look like the traditional construction worker style sandwich -- salami and the like. (All except for Matthew, who, as I explained, receives a hot, three course meal served family style, in clean pickle jars.) Tom eats his sandwich on a hoagie bun.
I try to grab a spot on the bench that will provide enough space for the arrival of the Jason family, and delve up to my armpit into the red mesh bag that serves as my lunch courier. The rat-chewn looking hole in the bag's side is evidence that I had been too impatient to open it from the top when it had first entered my life as a sack of oranges. My sandwich is pepper jack cheese on some gnarly specialty bakery bread. From its looks, I could have baked it myself, but it probably doesn't fool Joyce or any others in the "just baked it" family.
"Lunch boxes"
The men folk all have the same kind of lunchbox.
They are dark green, plastic coolers, about the right size for going on an overnight camp-out with three or four friends. And they have a really neat lid that holds a manly-looking metal thermos on top. The lunch boxes are often brought to them by their wives, well before coffee time, which happens after two or three loads of potatoes, around ten o'clock.
I never get tired of Jim saying "coffee time!" It's not just the promise of respite from the rumbling hoard, or the thrill of the carbohydrate-laden delights that Mare might serve -- I also like the way he says it. "Coffee time" sounds so 1950s to me. It's kind of refined, in a way. It implies a nice little home-baked spice cookie and a bit of innocent gossip.
It sounds like maybe I should fix my hair a bit (not that such a thing would be possible, since, A. I learned after the first day that you may as well wait to shower until AFTER you are caked in potato dirt and, B. for the past two hours my hair has been plastered down under a hat that I made out of a boiled wool sweater).
Anyway, "coffee time" sounds nice. "Break time" might imply cigarettes, small-scale gambling, going to the can, and possibly even sneaking a beer, but "coffee time" adds a layer of pink gingham to my world of dirt clods and tuberous aberrations.
Usually, like clockwork, one of the wives arrives doubly laden with a thermos-topped green lunch box and a steaming plate of cookies or something. (Do they use some instinctive wifely storm-sense to know which of them is bringing the baked goods, or do they call each other on the phone the night before?) But on the occasion when providence doesn't offer baked goods, the guys dig in their green lunch boxes for a piece of leftover cake, or whatever.
At lunch time, I watch the men get out their sandwiches. They usually look like the traditional construction worker style sandwich -- salami and the like. (All except for Matthew, who, as I explained, receives a hot, three course meal served family style, in clean pickle jars.) Tom eats his sandwich on a hoagie bun.
I try to grab a spot on the bench that will provide enough space for the arrival of the Jason family, and delve up to my armpit into the red mesh bag that serves as my lunch courier. The rat-chewn looking hole in the bag's side is evidence that I had been too impatient to open it from the top when it had first entered my life as a sack of oranges. My sandwich is pepper jack cheese on some gnarly specialty bakery bread. From its looks, I could have baked it myself, but it probably doesn't fool Joyce or any others in the "just baked it" family.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
The Potatoland Diaries - Chapter 8
DAY 7 — March 29, 2007
"Russet stampede, continued more"
What was I thinking?
"Russet stampede, continued more"
What was I thinking?
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Potatoland Diaries - Chapter 6
DAY 5 — March 28, 2007
"Russet stampede"
My sister, Shawna, thought that potato sorting sounded fun and interesting.
I knew that Jim was looking for more people, since Maureen would be in South Dakota visiting her grandkids during the week that we were going to have to sort "those big russets," an event to which Jim referred in a tone that made it sound like russets were something you might release, red-eyed and snorting with fury, from a heavily reinforced corral. So I asked him if he wanted me to bring my sister, and he said yes.
I had some fun, after that, dreaming up what to tell Shawna she needed to bring.
"Obviously, bring your cutlass. They get dull after awhile, so it might be good to bring two..." I mused.
But you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Shawna, so I gave up on the idea of trying to dupe her into coming dressed in pirate attire.
I did tell her to bring gloves and goggles. Her imagination had already supplied the rest of her ensemble: The worn (but clean) calico frock, topped off by a pair of men's overalls... The dotted kerchief tied over her curls, with one or two locks venturing out to cling to her careworn cheek... And, of course, the ubiquitous homemade Karo tin lunch pail with the wax paper-wrapped sandwiches.
We met in Border's parking lot at 8, and she actually was wearing overalls, I think, but the rest of the agreed-upon vision was only imagined. She had a shopping bag lunch, and from the loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter peeking out, I could see we belonged to the same school of lunch preparation.
It was cold, with flakes of snow blowing in a northeast wind. The russets were stomping and kicking up dust. Our task was to sort for rot, misshapen potatoes, rocks, clods... Oh, and to remove every potato that was larger than 10 ounces, which turned out to be nearly all of them.
My memory blurs. I don't even remember who pushed the green button on the conveyor that first time. But somehow, 500,000 potatoes came thundering off the rollers, choking us with dust. Our arms moved in fast motion, just like in that "I Love Lucy" episode that I have often used as an example of what my perfect job might be. But Lucy got to eat the chocolates. Those big, dirty russets didn't hold quite the same appeal.
It was probably pretty disappointing for Shawna that we didn't get to sing the banana boat song with substituted potato lyrics as she had imagined. She was too busy grabbing oversized spuds off those rollers to look up, or think. They went by so fast, it was like trying to empty a river with a tablespoon.
When, finally, the last potato rolled into the last truck, Shawna went into the break shed to fill out a W-4 form, so she would get paid for her day's work. The day probably equaled about an hour and a half of her professional wage as a technical writer. And it certainly won't be enough to cover the massage work it is going to take to erase the memory of the russet stampede.
"Russet stampede"
My sister, Shawna, thought that potato sorting sounded fun and interesting.
I knew that Jim was looking for more people, since Maureen would be in South Dakota visiting her grandkids during the week that we were going to have to sort "those big russets," an event to which Jim referred in a tone that made it sound like russets were something you might release, red-eyed and snorting with fury, from a heavily reinforced corral. So I asked him if he wanted me to bring my sister, and he said yes.
I had some fun, after that, dreaming up what to tell Shawna she needed to bring.
"Obviously, bring your cutlass. They get dull after awhile, so it might be good to bring two..." I mused.
But you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Shawna, so I gave up on the idea of trying to dupe her into coming dressed in pirate attire.
I did tell her to bring gloves and goggles. Her imagination had already supplied the rest of her ensemble: The worn (but clean) calico frock, topped off by a pair of men's overalls... The dotted kerchief tied over her curls, with one or two locks venturing out to cling to her careworn cheek... And, of course, the ubiquitous homemade Karo tin lunch pail with the wax paper-wrapped sandwiches.
We met in Border's parking lot at 8, and she actually was wearing overalls, I think, but the rest of the agreed-upon vision was only imagined. She had a shopping bag lunch, and from the loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter peeking out, I could see we belonged to the same school of lunch preparation.
It was cold, with flakes of snow blowing in a northeast wind. The russets were stomping and kicking up dust. Our task was to sort for rot, misshapen potatoes, rocks, clods... Oh, and to remove every potato that was larger than 10 ounces, which turned out to be nearly all of them.
My memory blurs. I don't even remember who pushed the green button on the conveyor that first time. But somehow, 500,000 potatoes came thundering off the rollers, choking us with dust. Our arms moved in fast motion, just like in that "I Love Lucy" episode that I have often used as an example of what my perfect job might be. But Lucy got to eat the chocolates. Those big, dirty russets didn't hold quite the same appeal.
It was probably pretty disappointing for Shawna that we didn't get to sing the banana boat song with substituted potato lyrics as she had imagined. She was too busy grabbing oversized spuds off those rollers to look up, or think. They went by so fast, it was like trying to empty a river with a tablespoon.
When, finally, the last potato rolled into the last truck, Shawna went into the break shed to fill out a W-4 form, so she would get paid for her day's work. The day probably equaled about an hour and a half of her professional wage as a technical writer. And it certainly won't be enough to cover the massage work it is going to take to erase the memory of the russet stampede.
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