A few years ago, I decided to grow potatoes on my property. We own a small fraction of an acre down-state, most of which is occupied by a century-plus old house. I try to use every available section of the land to grow things. Most years, I grow snow peas, tomatoes, hot peppers, basil, cilantro, collard greens and cucumbers. A small section of ground on the northern side of the house is not good for growing anything, so I decided to try to grow potatoes there. If potatoes can grow in Ireland and Aroostook County, I thought, surely they could grow on a crappy few square feet near the Hudson.
I researched which potatoes to plant. A certain species caught my eye, so I sent away for some of them. When they arrived, I saw that the tubers were about two inches in diameter, brown-skinned with bright purple flesh. The web site I bought them from said that this particular strain was suited to this climate zone, disease-resistant, prolific, and adaptable to sandy ground and shade. After they arrived in the mail, I put the bag next to the front door and waited for the weekend, when I would plant them.
This was when our kids were small and we had a Chinese babysitter. When I came home the night after the seed potatoes arrived, the babysitter showed us what she had made for dinner. It was, I believe, mapo doufu, some green vegetable, drunken chicken – and a bunch of purple potatoes. When I asked her why she had cooked my seed potatoes, she said, “Those were seed potatoes?” I said,
-Uh, yeah.
-How was I supposed to know that?
-Because that’s what the bag says.
-You know my English is no good!
-Well, they were with the gardening stuff, rather than with the food.
–Zhong zi! (Planting seeds!)
-That’s right. Zhong zi.
The potatoes were delicious.
I have said before that a mobile home park is for a writer Faulkner’s bawdy-house, mutatis mutandis. It both pays the bills and provides material. However, because of recent salubrious events in my park in northern New York, I may be in danger of killing my seed corn.
Some time in 2019, Wears Tin Hat wrote the following text to Mike, the manager of that park:
It’s also in the lease that plowing would occur
If we have to go the kegal way then be my quest
Legal way fine. Good luck buddy
You’re a fucking asshole
WTH is large, pale, and baby-like, and rarely leaves his home. He is always just inside the door when we knock and, until he started ducking my calls, he would always pick up on the first ring. I believe that he collects SSI. Mike got that text because he had asked WTH to move his car in order to let the plow guy plow the road next to his lot. WTH had refused to move his car, but was angry that the area where his car was parked had not been plowed.
In 2020, we discovered a septic issue under WTH’s home. The main that went underneath his home had clogged, and the septic riser joint was leaking raw sewage onto the ground in his crawl-space. Mike replaced the Orangeburg pipe that ran underneath his home, and we even comped him for a month of lot rent for the inconvenience. But when I spoke to the health inspector about it after he had had a chance to examine the job, he told me, “You don’t pay Mike enough”. At the thought of an increased expense, my face twitched. I said,
-What do you mean?
-The guy who lives there just tore into him in front of me.
-Hah, hah – you mean Wears Tin Hat?
-I think that’s him.
-You know – we told him about that problem. If we hadn’t, he would still be living on top of a puddle of shit.
-You couldn’t pay me enough to take that kind of abuse.
-I take care of Mike.
-I hope you do.
Then, in the fall of last year, WTH stopped paying lot rent. When I called him on it, he told me that the governor and the President said that he did not have to pay it. He said that his brother was a very wealthy man – much richer than me – and could squash me like a flee. He said that he could not wait to glue me to the floor in front of a judge.
I said that I was not rich.
When the eviction moratorium was repealed, WTH got a five-day demand and a thirty-day notice. His day in court was last Thursday. As I was driving up to the other park to fire the maintenance guy, my phone rang. It was Mike, with a download. He said,
-WTH and his wife got into it with each other in front of the judge.
-They what?
-She ripped him a new one in court.
-So, what else happened?
-The judge ordered them to pay back rent through March.
-Nice!
-He also said that they needed to move out.
-He issued a warrant?
-No. He said, ‘This isn’t working out. Neither of you want to be there.’
-That’s a very cogent statement of the obvious.
-And he said that if they could not sell the home by the end of April, he would issue a warrant.
-Excellent. I hope he was sober enough to remember that when we remind him of it in early May.
All this was confirmed by the park’s very competent attorney.
So – with luck, WTH will be gone shortly. Locks Daughter Up left in January, and Assaults Mike left last year. Thank God for Shovels Snow And Wears High Heels. She will never leave. Without her, margins would improve but there would be nothing to write about. And last fall, I planted garlic where I originally wanted to plant the purple potatoes. Robust shoots emerged before the snow fell, and I understand that we should have full-on scapes and bulbs in late summer.
Encouraging story. Now, try planting potatoes again.