“…Hey farmer farmer

Put away the DDT

I don’t care about spots on my apples

Leave me the birds and the bees

Please

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’ve got

Til it’s gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot….”

(excerpt) Big Yellow Taxi:

Joni Mitchell

    It caught my attention in a perplexing way that afternoon as a young boy watching my Grandfather search around in his apple tree for an apple for me to eat.  He obviously thought some apples were better than others, but I had no idea what that was all about.  It was not really even something I could form an intelligent question about, being so little, so I just watched with deep curiosity until he picked an apple.

    He looked the apple over and rubbed it on his shirt.  Then, he took his knife and sliced out a section, making another little cut to remove the seeds, and handed it to me.  Then he cut himself a piece and, holding it between his thumb and his knife, he took a crunching bite. 

    It seemed odd to me, though I did not know exactly why, that my Grandpa was using a knife to eat his apple instead of just biting into it like my parents did, and like other people I’d seen eat apples did.  Being a curious young man, I just had to ask.

    He explained and demonstrated to me that by using his knife and cutting out slices of the apple he could throw the parts with a worm in it into the garden for the birds to eat.

    I was shocked. How could there be worms in apples?  What would a worm be doing inside of an apple in the first place?  My Grandpa did not seem surprised at my question and calmly told me he could explain the whole thing. Grandpa told me a story.

    “One day, a woman shopping at the grocery store found a worm in an ear of corn.  She was so upset about this that she complained right out loud and said that she would not buy ears of corn with worms in them.   Later, the grocery store owner complained to the farmer and said that he would not buy ears of corn with worms in them because his customers would refuse to buy them.

The farmer started using bug killer to get rid of the worms and all the worms died.  The grocery store bought the corn with no worms, and the lady bought the ears of corn with no worms, and they were all happy.”  

                                            - paraphrasing my Grandfather Jesse

    He went on to explain about how all the clean and shiny produce at the market was sprayed to keep bugs away, and they were waxed and polished and that only the pretty ones were brought to market.  The tomatoes, melons, carrots, peaches, plums, pears and everything were all treated in a special way so that people would like them.

    On the other hand, his apple tree did not have anything sprayed on it so that the apples were just the way apples grew.  This meant that some of the apples had little worms in them just because that’s the way apple trees really are.

    In fact, Grandpa’s entire garden was different than the grocery store.  On one tomato plant, he showed me the biggest bug I ever saw.  It was like a worm only more like a caterpillar and it was as green as the plant and leaves.  I remember later seeing a bright green cocoon and getting another story about how worms and caterpillars made these little houses and turned into moths and butterflies.

    I really didn’t understand at the time why anyone would let bugs crawl on their food like that and I didn’t know how any of these critters fit together in a sort of system that all just worked out right.  I was just a curious kid. 

    It’s funny how the mind works and what we perceive of an event as it happens and as time goes by, and as we learn about life and our own psychology.  Things that are new or confusing can be shuffled into previous ways of looking at things and assumptions are made that seem to be logical deduction at the time.  Even when a new way of seeing or thinking arises, it can often be blurred or even forgotten under the pressure of daily life.

    Though I think I understand the difference between natural and pesticide grown produce, I still to this day prefer the apples I grew up with, the ones my parents bought at the grocery store that is.  Even if I felt that consuming these small amounts of pesticide over time would shorten my life and possibly cause cancer, I still would not wish to eat an apple with a worm in it, or even one that might have a bug inside.  The way of seeing involved in this is so engrained that I do not see it or think about it most of the time, unless I am pondering the phenomenon as I am while doing this writing.

    The power of a paradigm and the force of habit and life long environmental repetition can overrule even a very clear and logical presentation and demonstration that something being done might only be the result of a matter of taste.  Heavy doses of millions of tons of pesticide sprayed onto food that people eat were, at least partially, due to aesthetics and not due to any evil doings by natural creatures such as worms.  The next years population of bugs had higher tolerance levels to pesticides and required heavier doses of the pesticides and the invention of other ways to kill them.  Finally, the distaste that the shopper in my Grandpa’s story had about the worm on her ear of corn, which he would have just flicked off cutting the bad piece out with his knife, became such a small problem compared with cancer and other diseases related to toxins and poisons ingested by humans.

    The thing I really don’t understand here is that, even given this information, it is quite likely that my next apple will be the shiny, waxed, sprayed and perfect looking Red Delicious apple from the super grocery store a block away.  What’s the alternative?  Should I plant an apple tree?  Should I pay the extra money to buy an organic apple from a Health Food Store?  Should I protest the heavy use of poisons, irradiation, chemicals, waxes, colorings, etc. used on produce?

    While those are good ideas, the point here is that ways of thinking, seeing, behaving, and the principles behind preferences and choices can be related to subconscious patterns and habitual mechanical lifestyles.  It is possible that modern people would rather live a temporary, destructive, suicidal existence than go to the great pains of change.

    Would it be so bad to find a worm in your apple?