Mabel set the last tomato of the year on the cutting board the way you would set down something borrowed and precious, and the whole kitchen smelled like August again. It was a big one, still warm from sitting on the windowsill in the late sun, that deep red that only shows up on a tomato that has been allowed to take its sweet time.
Earl had leaned over the fence that morning and announced his vines were finished. Done. Kaput. He said it the way a man announces the closing of a business, and then he asked if we had any tomatoes left, which tells you everything you need to know about Earl and his powers of observation.
We did. One. And Mabel had plans for it that did not involve sharing.
The Gospel of the Tomato Sandwich
Now, don’t get me wrong, a tomato sandwich is not a complicated piece of cooking, and that is exactly the point. Mama always said a tomato sandwich is a test of whether you can leave well enough alone. Two slices of soft white bread, not toasted. Real mayonnaise, spread edge to edge so the bread doesn’t go soggy in the middle. One thick slice of tomato, salt, and a good grind of black pepper. That’s it. That’s the whole sermon.
Granny Mae used to say the tomato does the talking and everything else just holds the plate. She was right, and she was also the kind of woman who would watch you build the sandwich and correct your mayonnaise technique without ever raising her voice, which is a gift I have never managed to learn.
Bobby Ray came through the kitchen while Mabel was slicing and tried to negotiate for half. He got a look instead. Some things a man has to earn, and the last tomato sandwich of the year is one of them. He settled for standing at the counter eating the end slice with salt on it, the way he has done since he was tall enough to reach the cutting board, and honestly, that end slice might be the best bite of the whole tomato.
A Final Thought
I reckon the reason the last tomato sandwich matters so much is that it is the garden’s way of saying goodbye properly. All summer long the vines gave and gave, and we ate tomatoes until we were tired of them, and then one morning there is a single red tomato left and suddenly you remember what all the fuss was about. Summer doesn’t end with a frost. It ends with a sandwich, eaten standing up in the kitchen, with mayonnaise on your thumb.
Before that tomato was gone, Mabel was already saving the seeds from the last of them, tucked into a paper envelope with the variety name written on the front in her good handwriting. That envelope will sit in the kitchen drawer all winter, and come February I’ll be back at the table with the seed catalogs, figuring out when to start next year’s seeds so we can do this all over again.
If you ask me, that’s the thing about Southern living. Nothing good ever really ends. It just gets put up in an envelope, or a jar, or a story you tell over the fence, until it’s time to bring it back out again. That’s all for now, folks.
