THE TOMATO ROLLED ACROSS my coffee-spattered notes from the previous night’s school board meeting and fetched up against my Garfield cup with a “clink!”. I stared at the fruit, then tapped it with the end of my pen.
Yes, definitely a “clink!”.
I looked up at the elderly woman who had brought me this unsolicited gift, and winced—she wore a yellow-and-red floral-print dress under a man’s bright-blue nylon ski jacket. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Annaweis?”
“I want you to take a picture of my tomato and put it in the paper.”
I had already guessed as much. As editor of the Drinkwell, Saskatchewan, Herald (circulation 1,100) for three years, ever since I graduated from journalism school, I had seen enough four-pound potatoes, heart-shaped tomatoes, foot-long cucumbers, and two-headed stalks
