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SALT LAKE CITY — Bart Anderson remembers the first tomato he picked. He was 12 and it was a Moscow, Idaho.
"I found it, I picked it, I ate it, and my dad give me a licking because he said he got the first ripe tomato," he said.
That didn't stop Anderson from picking tomatoes. In years past, he's planted 100 tomato plants in his backyard garden. This year, he has a mere 30.
A notice for a Temple Square garden talk bills the master gardener as the "Tomato King," but Anderson isn't really sure he deserves the crown. He does constantly sing the praises of his beloved fruit and vegetable, often by quoting Texas songwriter Guy Clark's "Homegrown Tomatoes."
Anderson, a straw hat on his head and a signature toothpick in his mouth, plucked a Sun Sugar tomato from the vine and popped it in his mouth.
"That's so good. That's better than a cold drink of water," he said. "If the good Lord has made anything better than a homegrown tomato … he'd have kept it for himself."
Nearby, his little dog, Sunny, gnawed on a lemon cucumber. Sunny, he explained, also enjoys corn, raspberries morning glory blossoms and, of course, tomatoes. The carcass of a half-eaten Roma lies in the grass.
"But his greatest asset," Anderson explained, "is eating dandelions."
Anderson is a spry 83 years old. The secret of his youth, he said, is the tomato.
"I've always liked fruits and vegetables," he said. "In fact, my brother would trade me my portion of the roast on Sunday dinner. I'd trade him for his peaches, and he could have my meat, and he died when he was 54 years old from diabetes and I'm still going along."
Bart is the oldest of six siblings and one of two surviving.
"Tomatoes are excellent for you," he said. "See, you don't get cancer if you eat homegrown tomatoes. You don't get a lot of other things if you eat tomatoes. Fresh out of the garden gives you a lot of things, gives you the 'Rocky Mountain Quickstep' if you eat some of it too much. But most of it is good for you."
There are only two things that money can't buy, Anderson said, and that's true love and homegrown tomatoes.
Bart Anderson isn't squirreling away the Romas, German Howards and Hillbillies. He said he gives away about 90 percent of his crop and gifting all those tomatoes, he said, helps him cultivate friendships.
"Like I said, you make the best friends in the world with a homegrown tomato. You don't make good friends giving them zucchini, but you do with homegrown tomatoes."
This is the power of the tomato, according to Anderson — to ward off old age, to bring happiness to dogs and to promote world peace.
"I bet if they take a crop of tomatoes to Israel we could solve the Middle East problem," Anderson said. "We might even get ISIS eating a few tomatoes, cure them guys."
