Spuds: Not Something to Spit At

They rarely make it into the news.  Potatoes, that is.  Not as colorful or as flavorful as their cousin the sweet potato, the common "Idaho potato," as we call it, needs to be dolled up with sour cream and bacon bits before it becomes appealing to our sensation-desiring tastes.

The only occasion during my lifetime that the potato made front-page news was when an over-confident vice-presidential candidate made a photo appearance at an elementary school.  Potatoes fared better than the candidate, however, who tried to correct a boy's spelling of "potato" -- when it was the boy's spelling that was correct.

Even if news reporters rarely find potatoes newsworthy, a young painter with a heart intensely responsive to the poor did:  Vincent van Gogh, in his 1885 painting "The Potato Eaters," captured the somewhat sad nobility of a poor family sharing a meal of plain potatoes.

In the quite contrasting economic situation of U.S. in its post-W.W.II baby-boom, some potatoes became disposable items, so cheap that they could be turned into toys and then tossed away.  "Mr. Potato Head" (the first toy to be advertised on the new medium of television) was a simple assortment of plastic feet, ears, eyes, and other body-parts that could be stuck into a passive potato.  What a simple toy compared to today's electronic games!  And yet, it was a toy that made room for a child's imagination and for play between children (especially after Mrs. Potato Head came along).

There is a long ancestral story behind today's potatoes.  The lowly potato plant prefers high altitudes, its native place having been the western mountain range of the Americas, especially in what is today Peru and Colombia.  Discovered by Spanish conquistadores, it was carried across the Atlantic in the 16th century.  Once it reached Europe, it worked its way northward from the Mediterranean countries, eventually reaching the British Isles.  In the following century, it returned to America, but this time to the eastern coast of North America, carried there by the Puritans.  As European-Americans carried it further westward, the now thoroughly domesticated potato came full- circle, meeting in Wyoming some of it close relatives who were natives.

Despite the ways potatoes have thus served humankind, they usually make an appearance in history books by their absence. Namely, the Irish famine of 1845 and 1846.  When the potato first came to Ireland a couple centuries before, the tubers, growing underground, had the advantage of being hidden from the sight of marauding British who wanted to destroy the Irish people's crops.  But in the mid 1840's, a blight devastated the usual harvest of potatoes, which the Irish had come to depend upon as their staple crop, their essential form of produce.  A Catholic priest, Father Mathew captured the plight and observed:

"In many places the wretched people
were seated on the fences of their gardens,...
wailing bitterly [over] the destruction
 that had left them foodless."

A million Irish emigrated to America.

Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from the humble potato.  Potatoes are so knobbly that the standard reminder to grocery shoppers is that there is no "perfect" potato.  So is it with us humans, with our moles, birthmarks, and other physical imperfections.

Also, our media today force us to live in a society that spotlights celebrities.  But few of us can be a celebrity.  Adolescents and young adults can especially feel unworthy because they have not accomplished something "big."  Nevertheless, like the potato that has served as a staple crop, it is the common people -- those who ring the cash-registers, tend the kids, and pick up the garbage -- who serve as the foundation of society.  There is a beauty in that.

~ ~ ~

(Has the long history of the potato made you think anything about our lives today?)

(The quotation by the priest is taken from The Origins of Fruit and Vegetables by Jonathan Roberts, © 2001, p. 192.)
(The first photo is in the Public Domain. The second is used by Fair Use.)