Of Sweet Potatoes, Potatoes Not So Sweet, and an Evil Woman Named Ruby

     Jerry says I can't count on people to know the Ruby song:  We have officially reached farthood and what we take for popular culture nobody around us has a clue about.  He cited as evidence the failure of a young friend to recognize the "Green Acres" theme song.  (Gasp.)  But I was shaken up myself at Halloween when a sweet young thing of 25 I was volunteering with at the Canyon didn't know the Roller Derby Queen song even though -- brace yourself -- she had dressed up for the holiday as:  A Roller Derby queen.  

     I mentioned this to my friend Mary who's three years older and SHE DIDN'T KNOW IT EITHER.  So apparently the only two people who know the damn thing are me and Jim Croce and he's dead.

     FYI, youngsters, the RDQ was 5 foot 6, 215, a bleached-blonde mama with a streak of mean.  Most notably, she was built like a refrigerator with a head. 

     Now.  Ruby.  "Ruby" was a Kenny Rogers song wherein a paralyzed man watches helplessly as the woman he loves whores herself up to go out and "take her love to town."  He wants to shoot her but, as luck would have it, he can't move.  I'm not quite sure why I always found that so funny. 

     Anyway it's one of those ear worm songs you can't expunge from your consciousness, and I have never met a woman named Ruby without suspecting her of being Evil.   

   

Of Sweet Potatoes, Potatoes Not So Sweet And An Evil Woman Named Ruby:

Wherein A Gardener Takes Her Love To Town

By Robin Ford Wallace

            You’ve painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair.

Ruby, are you contemplating going out somewhere?

            OK, OK.  I get the idea.  Turn the damn thing off.  Infidelity is bad enough.  Country music just makes it worse.

Country music makes everything worse.

“Ruby” in particular has got to be one of the smarmiest songs ever written.  “You’ve painted up your lips,” indeed!  As if a little makeup means a girl is “taking her love to town.”  Honey, this is the South.  Nobody goes to the dump without lipstick. 

Nobody over 40, anyway.   I never painted much when it was a matter of gilding the lily but now that we’re talking sows’ ears and silk purses I get through buckets of the stuff. 

Not just lipstick, either, but the works, eyeliner and foundation and that gop you put on underneath to fill in the cracks.  They used to call it concealer, which sounded furtive and possibly illegal, the cosmetic equivalent of gun silencers or hush money, but I could live with that; who at my age has nothing to hide? 

Nowadays, though, they’ve changed the name to “primer” and they’ve put cutesy little brushes or rollers on the bottles so as you stand there in front of the mirror basically spackling yourself you feel not so much that you are primping as that you are shoring up your crumblin’ façade.  God, I hate getting old!

And that’s what all of it is about, the tubes and the brushes and the Age-Defyin’ Revlon, not so much feminine vanity as the reverse, a merciful reluctance to subject innocent humanity to the ruts and potholes left on a girl’s face by time’s winged chariot.  The line in the Ruby song that irritates me the worst is:  “The wants and the needs of a woman your age, Ruby I realize.”  Ha!  Like Kenny Rogers has any clue how it feels to be female, and aging. 

Not that it’s any of Mr. Rogers’ business but yes, my wants and needs do include hair tint of some vaguely convincing shade, not too light because blondness in a person of my coloring really does have a certain “Want a date?” connotation, not too dark or my face looks like the Parthenon.  Not as in classic beauty, I mean, but as in white and 2000 years old.

But let’s stop beating that particular horse.  I’m not mad at Kenny Rogers, I’m mad at you. 

Did it ever occur to you that our little problem might not be the fault of my painted lips, tinted hair and general air of geriatric sluttiness?  That some itsy-bitsy part of the blame might be yours for leaving me high and dry when I  needed you most?  “Still need some company,” my sagging butt!  I could have used some this summer. 

How many times did I seek you out in June, lips curved in pleasurable anticipation?  You weren’t there.

And in July, when I reached for you in the sweet-smelling hay, what did I find?  Nothing much.

And in September, when I gave it one last, desperate try?  You just lay there, doing precisely and profoundly nothing.

As you have for years now!  Really, is it any wonder I looked for comfort elsewhere?

I didn’t have far to look.  There, right where you should have been, was your natural replacement, ruddy and robust while you were wan and white, strong and sweet while you were anemic and atrophied, above all there for me when you were MIA.

So yes, I’ve moved on, so you might as well put a cork in the “Ruby” crap.  I am not an Evil Woman and unlike the man in the song fate has not left you a crippled invalid.  

Fate has instead left you a hopeless vegetable.

            Specifically, a potato.

All right, Gentle Reader, if you have not inferred by now that our subject this week is the relative merits of the Irish potato and ipomea batatas, the sweet potato, I would remind you, gently, that this a gardening column.  Sort of.  What else would we be talking about? 

Here is the situation:  This summer, for the third year in a row, my potato crop failed miserably, while meanwhile my sweet potatoes ate New York.  So from necessity I began using sweet potatoes for many dishes I usually make with white, such as my famous roasted potato chunks.   

One day I used such pathetic few white potatoes as we harvested this year to make a batch of the chunks, and eating them I realized I actually preferred the sweet potato version.  White potatoes require hefty infusions of garlic and herbs.  With sweet potatoes, add salt and olive oil and you’re done.

Also this summer I learned that sweet potato leaves are edible.  You cook them like spinach or any other greens, and they’re not just good for you, they’re good, too. 

Irish potato foliage just lies there and withers.

It was thoughts like that one that led to my feelings of disloyalty.  Longtime readers may recall that in “Sex, Lies and Potatoes,” I dotingly misquoted:  “Ah, Spud, shall we be true to one another?”

            Apparently not.

Anyway, here is how you make the chunks:

            Peel or scrub sweet potatoes and cut into biggish cubes.  Toss with salt and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.  Roast for 30 minutes in a 400-degree oven alongside whatever else you are cooking.  If you let the edges burn a bit they are particularly good.

            Compare these with the blander Irish potato version and I warn you, no matter how big a spud fan you are, you, too, may end up taking your love to town.

END

     Robin Ford Wallace lives in Deerhead Cove, where she plays quietly in the dirt, disturbing no one.