This column appears in the May 2017 issue of Potato Grower.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him…?
And he said, He that shewed mercy on him.
—Luke 10:36-37
Several weeks ago, after attending a potato industry meeting, I was sitting on a plane in Denver, wondering if we were ever going to take off. There was apparently something wrong with the communication system in the air traffic control tower, and the plane (as well as several others, I imagine) could do nothing but sit there on the runway, filled to the brim with uncomfortable, impatient passengers, myself included.
I kept checking my watch, though I knew it wouldn’t do any good; when you travel by plane, you’re at the mercy of the airlines and airports. But I was scheduled for a 36-minute layover in Salt Lake City before catching my last flight to Pocatello, Idaho. That 36-minute cushion was steadily ticking away, and I was still on the ground in Denver. A couple growers were on the plane, with same flight schedule, and I imagine they were nervously watching the clock as well.
At about minute 28, we finally took off, and I settled in because, well, what else could I do? An hour and a half later our plane was at Gate A8 in Salt Lake. Naturally, no one paid any attention to the flight attendant’s appeal to let passengers with tight connections off first. So there I stood in the aisle, 16 rows back, trying to stay patient and optimistic. When I was finally walking down the jet bridge, I checked the time. Five minutes; should be all right.
But then I stopped and looked at the big screen to see which gate I needed to get to for my Salt Lake-to-Poky flight. E62. If you’ve never been to the Salt Lake Airport, just know that A8 to E62 is every bit as far as it sounds. And by this time we were down to about four minutes.
I took off at half-walk, half-run in the direction of the literal opposite end of the airport and almost immediately spotted the aforementioned growers attempting to catch the same flight as me. I had only met these people a mere 20 hours prior, but once I caught up to them and made eye contact, we were magically in this thing together, bound by some transcendent, unseen force. And we were not going to miss that flight.
The second time that irritatingly pleasant voice rang out over the intercom with the message that “Delta Flight 1573 with service to Pocatello is in final boarding,” we gave up all pretenses of dignity and began to flat run, blasting holes through the masses for one another like a fullback on fourth and goal. The third “final boarding” call (or was it the fourth?) came as we rounded the corner onto Concourse E. The sand had just about run out of the hourglass. We bounded down the escalator and there, 30 feet away, stood a blue-vested airline employee waving us in. Winded but triumphant, we handed over our boarding passes, exchanged smug I-never-had-a-doubt looks, and boarded our plane home.
It was kind of a cool moment—not so much the sprinting through the airport and catching the plane, but near instantaneous camaraderie built in the mad dash. Like I said, these growers were not people I knew very well; I had just met them the night before. Maybe they feel differently, but I feel like they are people I actually know, not just people I’ve met.
I think being involved in agriculture breeds that in people. A grower from Florida can meet a grower from the Columbia Basin at some trade show in St. Louis, and that night they’re going out for drinks together. As the years go by, they’ll bump into each other maybe once or twice a year, but every time they’ll sit down and catch up on one another’s farms and families, as if they’ve known each other since kindergarten.
A lot has changed in agriculture over the decades and centuries, but this one thing hasn’t. Two hundred years ago, when everyone was a farmer, a guy knew his neighbors, which included everyone within at least a 10-mile radius. Your next-door neighbor might have been two miles down the road and you may have only seen him every month or two, but you’d be good friends.
Has that really changed much? Farmers still, for the most part, don’t live all that close together. And while the rest of the world may have changed to the point where next-door neighbors in an apartment building—people who share a wall, for heaven’s sake—may not even know each other’s names, ag folk still know and love their neighbors, even if they’re a little more spread out. It may be tough to get to know the person living 9 inches away in Manhattan, New York; but it doesn’t take much for potato a grower from Manhattan, Mont., to become close friends with his counterpart in Manhattan, Kan. The knowledge of that shared occupation is all the assurance they need.
That’s downright neighborly.