PART 1 – The People in the Fog
A new neighbor reported my 79-year-old father’s vegetable garden to the county and called it an eyesore.
The inspector gave Dad thirty days to remove it.
Dad didn’t argue.
He shook the inspector’s hand and asked him for one favor.
“Come back Saturday morning at six.”
The notice arrived on a Tuesday.
Dad sat at the kitchen table reading it with his glasses halfway down his nose.
“Unmaintained agricultural use within a residential zone.”
That was how the county described his garden.
It covered about half an acre.
Nine rows of green beans.
Nearly three hundred tomato plants.
Potatoes.
Squash.
Onions.
Beets.
More vegetables than one old man could possibly eat.
Dad lived alone.
And he ate about as much as a sparrow.
Years earlier, I had asked him why he planted so many beans.
“Who are all those for?”
Dad shrugged.
