Little tomatoes, big ideas

You think you have disappointments.

A couple of months I dug into our back yard three Big Boy tomato plants that promised tasty fist-sized red tomatoes destined to sit inside BLTs about now.

As the weeks passed by I noticed little green tomatoes starting to emerge on the vines — lots of them — and thought I was going to hit the jackpot.

Over time my precious little green tomatoes multiplied in numbers but, alas, not in size.

They finally started to turn red. But they still weren’t much bigger than a cherry.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t going to have fist-sized Big Boys after all. They were little cherry tomatoes all along, apparently mislabeled when they were potted and sold.

Although they’re still tasty, cherry tomatoes are not well-suited for BLTs since their miniature size would require an awful lot to cover the bacon on a sandwich. Plus they’d be hard to keep inside the bread.

It isn’t such a bad deal, though. I enjoy cherry tomatoes. They’re sweet and you can pop them into your mouth right off the plants. I’m not out that much money either. I’d only spent a couple bucks on each plant.

So while we’re snacking on cherry tomatoes, we’re buying big tomatoes at the store to fill out our BLT sandwiches. And waiting for some homegrown to show up at the office so I can bring them home. You can’t beat homegrown tomatoes, regardless of whether they’re Big Boys or cherry tomatoes.

A COUPLE weeks ago I wrote about the sale of Tom Bedell’s home on West Lake Okoboji, the most expensive home sale in Iowa at $9.5 million.

A Storm Lake native remembers Tom Bedell back when he was a young entrepreneur in Spirit Lake.

This reader recalled that The Noblemen, a talented rock and roll band in the 1960s comprised of musicians from the Storm Lake and Albert City areas, had close ties to Tommy, which is what he was called back in 1968. Bedell opened music stores in Okoboji and Spencer and sold equipment to The Noblemen. “He was a fascinating guy if only because he was our age but was such an entrepreneur, doing things no one his age could (or would) do,” recalls our reader. “He created a record label — Bedell Records — in order to produce The Noblemen’s one and only 45 RPM record titled ‘Yellow Canary,’ an original ballad. On the other side, the B side, the group recorded the Beatles song ‘If I Needed Someone.’ ”

In 1979 Tom took over the family fishing gear business, Berkley and Company, founded by his father and former congressman Berkley Bedell. In 2007 Tom sold the business to Pure Fishing, left the home he and his wife built in Okoboji and eventually settled in Bend, Ore., where he began making custom handmade guitars that sell for many thousands of dollars. He is also an ardent conservationist and advocate of sustainability.

Tom attended basketball games at Storm Lake High School when Spirit Lake played the Tornadoes here. I noticed him generally sitting by himself in the top row on the northeast side of the gym.

I never visited his home but in 2006 I did attend a political event in a barn he renovated into an event center west of Okoboji. The first floor of the barn was a basketball court. The second floor was a ballroom that featured a Steinway concert grand piano. It was the nicest barn I’ve ever seen.