Curtis and his Big Boy Tomatoes

Curtis Cline loved to work with plants of all types.  The plant nursery business was perfect for him because he could grow exceptionally large healthy trees, shrubs, azaleas, and ornamental plants for Cline's Nursery, and feel gratified.  Dad also grew fruit trees and had a huge garden each year.  Curtis liked to experiment with different varieties of vegetables annually to see how they differed.  He grew eggplants, snap beans, peas, corn, peppers, green onions, and every year he had eight or ten tomatoes plants.

I once asked him why he grew all that food when he and mom ate out more than they ate at home.  He told me it was gratifying to provide food to people who could not afford to purchase fresh vegetables.  He said he enjoyed sharing with his sisters too, besides he always enjoyed eating some of what he grew.  I remember he always enjoyed eating corn on the cob.   He put on a lot of butter when he ate the corn.  When he finished eating six or seven cobs, he had butter all over his face.  My mother fussed at him for years about using a napkin during the eating process, but he just laughed and said, "Oh Marie, the corn is too good to be worried about how my face looks.  I use a napkin after I finish eating."

The newspaper clipping is undated, but it seems to me that it was taken sometime in the 1960s.  Dad was bragging that his Big Boy tomatoes plants were so tall he had to use a step ladder to reach the top.  The word got around to the Sikeston Standard, and they sent a reporter out to see if it was true. The picture shows that the tomatoe plants grew to about eight feet tall.  Everyone in the neighborhood, at church, the family, and the usual people in need, had tomatoes that year. He got a kick out of seeing the picture of his tomatoes in the Sikeston Standard newspaper.