What we underestimate
Dear Friend,
I squeezed my car into a tiny parking lot in front of a nursery off Hueneme Road in Oxnard, California. I almost missed Teto’s Produce, a small fruit and vegetable market nestled underneath white, stretched canopies. Except for the nursery next door, it sat alone, adjacent to a dirt field.
It reminded me of a market the Joads may have encountered on their quest to California in The Grapes of Wrath: a make-shift hut with little protection from the wind and dust. I hoped its lack of curb appeal promised an abundance of flavors.
My friend arrived to meet me, and we entered the cramped space. Shelves of bananas, lemons, apples, peaches, green peppers, pineapples, plums, onions, and apricots somehow expanded the area. We had reached the Promised Land.
We both wanted strawberries, and they had crates of them, picked fresh from the vine that morning. When we were kids, my brother and I ate strawberries like candy. We’d munch the plumb berries and toss their leafy tops on a napkin. Afterward, we’d suck the seeds from between our teeth.
I selected my crates and asked for a bag of avocados behind the register. My friend grabbed a box of Alltaufo mangos, yellow on the outside and decadent on the inside. I couldn’t resist purchasing a banana to eat with my strawberries. I hadn’t eaten breakfast, and my stomach grumbled.
As we exited with our bounty, I somehow balanced my crates of strawberries in one hand and peeled my banana in the other. While my friend packed half of his mangos in a bag for me, I gobbled my goodies, stuffing my cheeks like a chipmunk. He took one look at me and laughed.
As a city girl accustomed to spacious, airconditioned grocery stores with neat aisles and the Backstreet Boys crooning through the stereo, I underestimate the value of humble produce stands and mom-and-pop stores, which for years, were the backbone of our communities.
As I drove away, I looked at the vast adjacent field and hoped it would remain that way, leaving space for life’s simple pleasures.
Love and Light,
Ebony
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