The tomato that keeps on giving

This is a sweet story passed on to us by a friend.

We had almost forgotten but a couple of very chilly nights hit our tomato plants and the discussion about salvaging many pounds of green tomatoes brought the story back.

Here is how the friend told it, we hope we are reconstructing it faithfully. The punch line is certainly correct, you can't forget that one easily.

I was at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, to see a Furthur show, and we had just arrived in the parking lot of Google. You may not know this, but the nerd company lets the Amphitheater use many of its parking lots for event parking. You can try and find out for yourselves if that was a condition of the city of Mountain View for expansion of the Plex or if Google does this out of the goodness of their hearts.

Our clown car was still emptying out when I noticed a couple a few cars over with two big trays of small tomato plants, a few inches high. We saw them walk from car to car giving away free tomato plants. Some people took five or more of the rolled up newspaper containers lovingly made for each individual plant. 

We watched for maybe ten minutes. They gave the last plant to a young man, late teens or early twenties. He was wearing a hippie "regulation tie-dye", had a beard, sandals, the works.

We heard him say he did not have a ticket to the show but he'd be just fine, maybe someone would trade the plant for a ticket.

It was still two hours before the show, an hour before the gates, we spent the time strolling around the smaller parking lot set aside for Shakedown Street, like in the old days, where the hippies were selling all sorts of crafts, art, and trinkets as well as food.

When we followed the crowd to the gate after the walk around Shakedown Street and the stroll down memory lane, there was the young man from the lot, walking slower than the others, holding the tomato plant in front of his chest, smiling.

Hey, you're doing fine with your tomato?

Oh, yes, she's cute, isn't she?

Hope you manage to get a ticket.

I had my miracle, he stopped, breaking into a big smile. I traded the plant for a ticket.

You traded the plant for a ticket? I asked, staring at the plant he was holding in front of his chest.

Yes, and then they said thank you and gave me the plant and asked me to give it a home.

Ah, hippies, so any of our readers have a good recipe for green tomatoes?