Dave Wood

These days you’re likely to be buttonholed by proud gardeners showing off their exceptional produce. Me, for example: I’m no different. Seems that the family I have fallen heir to is obsessed with celebrating its horticultural achievements whether successful or not. Whitehall Times editor Scott Thompson sends me snippets of such examples of our celebrations. In one entry from 1909, my namesake Dave Wood reported to editor Beach that he had just planted 20 acres of sugar beets with the help of German migrant workers. Ever the optimist, Dave also contributed news that the Pigeon Trading Association had shipped a carload of steers for which Chicago had paid 4 cents a pound stating, “farmers are now selling off all the stock they have.”

Twenty years later editor Nicholls reported that my Grandpa Ralph had just shipped several tons of sugar beets and discovered that they were worth considerably less than it cost to raise them, so he decided to cease the 20-year-old source of income.

When my father Harold had horticultural news to share, he preferred to drop into the fabled Antique Bar operated by sisters Olive Bitter and Glady Gilbertson to show off the succulent beefsteak tomatoes and giant sweet onions he grew in his garden one block from the Antique built by the Gund Brewery in La Crosse. Olive and Glady oohed and ahhed about them then took them to Olive’s apartment upstairs to prepare one of Olive’s superb meals. Dad stayed on to play a rousing game of Wheel of Fortune with his very sharp pal, Bruno Gilbertson.

Dad wasn’t always successful in his horticultural exercises. He entered his giant Bermuda onions in the 1976 centennial garden contest and the 4-H official judge gave him a third because “they were too big.”

He returned to his garden muttering something about “the goddamned courthouse.” He inserted a tray of slightly pink, definitely unripe tomatoes into a paper bag, followed by a rotten banana from the Farmer’s store produce department. On Saturday morning, the gas emitted from the banana had turned the tomatoes to perfection. “Something I read in ‘Organic Gardening,’” he whispered to me with a note of satisfaction.

He took a first.

Nor am I, his son, immune to praise for my wife’s horticultural astonishments. I am lame, in more ways than one, and supervise Ruth from my wheelchair on the art of pruning the suckers on our staked tomatoes.

Ruth’s labors this year have paid off big time, for on July 16, 2026 Anno Domini, Ruth strode into the house bearing the fruit of our—her—labor: a perfectly shaped deep red Early Girl Tomato! I nestled it in my crabbed, liver-spotted paw and headed for Johnnie’s Bar, presented it to owner Dave and asked if Roger had been in with anything like it, Roger being the jardenier par excellence and member of Johnnie’s fabled Corner of Knowledge, where customers waste hours showing off arcane bits of knowledge acquired at expensive Ivy League schools, seminaries and atomic laboratories, et alia.

When I finally returned home Ruth was not a little bit displeased to discover I had left the pomme d’ excellence at the bar next to the menu offering of fancy cocktails. “Í was planning on serving BLTs. I guess there’s nothing left to do but go out for supper---Meritage? Or the Lexington?”

I know, I know! The wage of prideful sin is Debt.