The Red Deuce Tomato (05.16.23)

Readers, do you know about the Red Deuce tomato? Buckle up. 

Midsummer last year I was traveling over to Michigan, a journey I’ve been making for decades. For most of that time, I used the old route, down through Chicago and around the bottom of Lake Michigan, where every interstate truck moving long-haul across America crowds the hundred miles or so of available freeway before springing free. In aggregate, I have probably spent weeks piled up in that traffic. No, thank you.

These days I prefer either of the two Lake Michigan car ferries. The northernmost, the Badger, runs from Manitowoc, Wisconsin to Ludington, a wonderfully aged coal-fired behemoth that makes the six hours water journey seem oceanic. Evocative, scenic, historic, and highly recommended. 

The Lake Express from Milwaukee to Muskegon is a water-horse of an entirely different color, lacking vintage charm but offering speed…2 ½ hours coast to coast, a fraction of the time it can take to drive, bypassing Chicago and those congested tollways. My favorite eastbound departure pulls out of the harbor at dawn, the city skyline outlined on your left and the big lake lifting as you pass through the breakwater into pink light. Hardy folk think they’ll make the crossing on the open top deck, but when the big ferry accelerates, the wind is fierce, and even the maritime-stalwart go below to watch the water through the windows, and trace progress on the live nautical map. In due course, the shoreline appears, with its lighthouse, dunes and vast beaches, and you are there. Somewhere entirely else. 

On the Michigan side, I turned south through the resort towns. Along the way, I spotted a new-to-me farmstand and stopped to provision. Good cheese, artisan crackers, and whatever was in season.

The proprietor was a smiling strong woman, dressed head to toe in Harley- Davidson. We discussed the growing season for a few minutes as I admired her stock and then asked “I haven’t been in before. What should I definitely buy?” She paused and grinned and I had the feeling I was undergoing some kind of evaluation. And then she said “Would you like to have the best tomato you’ve ever had?” And I, of course, grinned back and said “Yes, I most certainly would.” 

She took me into the back, to stacks of carefully-packed cartons of fruit. Round and bright red, heavy for their size, nearly identical in shape; when she took a top off, I could smell their tomato-ness. “They just came in today,” she said. “They’re grown for us by the Amish in northwest Indiana. I take all I can get from them. For the next few days, my family will only eat tomato sandwiches. Here, buy this sourdough and get some good mayonnaise; that’s all you’ll need.”

“Have any bacon and lettuce?” I asked. “Nope,” decidedly, “and you don’t need them. Just these tomatoes is all you need.” And what was the name of this paragon, this exemplar, this champion of tomatoes?

“The Red Deuce.”

I was traveling alone, and you don’t put tomatoes in the refrigerator, so I bought the sourdough and the mayonnaise and just three Red Deuce. And that was dinner and that was breakfast and that was lunch, and it was the best tomato I’d ever had in a lifetime of good-tomato enthusiasm.

A week or so later, I called the stand, with ardor and in supplication. “I want to pick up tomatoes to carry home, but I’m looking at your hours and you’ll be closed when I’m driving up to the ferry. Here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to buy the tomatoes now. Can you put them out under a tree in your parking lot, outside your security fence, so I can pick them up after hours? Throw a sack or something over them; I’ll take the chance of someone else finding them. My risk. It’d be evening when I’d be coming by.”

“Nope.”

“Please?”

“Look, I’m sorry. But we have cameras. If my husband sees anyone driving in and coming up to our place outside the security fence…well, he’ll shoot you.”

And that was the end of that.

I spent the rest of that summer calling around the state of Minnesota trying to find someone who sells the Red Deuce. Nope again.

At the end of winter, though, I did find seeds. The catalog described the Red Deuce  in pedestrian terms as “excellent second early variety. The determinate plants produce big yields of large to extra-large fruit that have great eye-appeal and good eating quality. The fruit are globe-shaped, uniform ripening and ripen to a deep red color.”  Not a word about the Michigan farmstand, the Amish, or the shotgun, but I know what I know. 

We live in a city high-rise with a south-facing balcony. In short order, we acquired an extremely large plastic pot, bought 100 seeds and persuaded a kind greenhouse friend to start them. In due course, I’ll buy a plant for me, and one each for my daughter and daughter-in-law. I’ll lay in a supply of sourdough and good mayonnaise. Tomato sandwiches, here we come. Maybe just a touch of pepper.

The Red Deuce. Keep it in mind. (Ask for the plants by name, right now, at Black’s Greenhouse in Lakeland, Minnesota. Or in northwest Indiana, or at a roadside farmstand south of Muskegon, Michigan.)

Grow, tomato babies, grow! Here, at long long last, comes tomato season.