Jorge

Jorge had a curly nest of hair crowding his eyes, and bearded round cheeks that pushed them into a squint. The effect was that he looked always in the wake of laughter, and his round belly only added to his congenial aura. He was so pleasant and enthusiastic he was chosen by the Farmer's Market Association to act as ambassador, giving talks on the new movements in nutrition. They were a well meaning bunch of college educated Luddites, who had come back to the soil like a baptism. Jorge was to be their sword of fire, cutting a swath though the ignorance they detested, his Trojan horse demeanor opening up gates that might otherwise be closed to their pulpit.

Jorge had a history in food. His grandfather was a migrant laborer in California, the callouses of his hands stained permanently red. Little Jorge remembered the old man who could mend anything, and the day he took to the road again after being cooped up in their Nebraska homestead for too long. The years of traveling with each growing season would not retire from him, even though he had retired from them. He left a parcel of land taken up by Jorge's father, an engineer who took to calling himself Tommy to accommodate his coworkers. But at home Tommy put on worn denim and a cowboy hat just like his father and showed Jorge how to grow peppers, corn and beans, with an herb patch that belonged to his mother but that Tommy always seemed to be worrying about. It was those memories that Jorge wanted to encourage in others, the raw pleasure of vegetables, and the reward of labor.

Jorge would to tell them to forget everything they knew about nutrition, and they looked at him confused. He told them it was still true that they should eat a well balanced diet, but also stressed that the food should be locally grown. Hands went up and they asked about the barren winter months. He told them how terrible super market food was for them, but also admitted that Walmart bought more organic produce than anyone in the country. They should all be eating more fish, but farm raised fish was bad, but the fish should be sustainable, but wild caught, and remember local. More hands went up and Jorge remembered he was land locked. Heritage meat was best, home raised even better. He saw the looks of disapproval on the people his parents and grandparents age, who had remembered how ashamed they were keeping livestock in their homes as children. Beans were good, but not canned beans because the cans were bad for you, but plastic bags were bad too, much harder to recycle.

The more he talked the more Jorge realize he was lecturing these people on an impossible point. Everything they should do seemed to be contradicted by something they shouldn't, and none of it was evidently affordable. In the best case he was telling a room full of people to be more educated, as if they were willfully ignorant, and in the worst case he was telling them to earn more money, as if they were defiantly lazy. He was sent to deliver a hard line message, that it would be better to go without than to eat the food these people were accustomed too. But the people who told Jorge to say that had never known the possibility of going without, their exclusion was a problem of opulence. He couldn't judge a person for choosing to eat poorly when they had no other options, certainly not if he couldn't provide a viable solution. The food memories came back to him there, the tomato warmth of his grandfathers face and the orange blossom smell of his mother. He was suddenly ashamed, like he had burst into these people's home and seen them naked, scolding them for impropriety.