Tomato Man to the rescue with adjustable towers.

Byline: WRITE ON By Patricia Mees Armstrong For The Register-Guard

Here we go again, folks ... Batman Redux, a kind of philosopher prince in a poster paint movie - another MAN icon in the ongoing gent-genre parades. Take your pick in song, story, promos: Candy Man, Tin Man, Tambourine Man, Spider Man, Music Man, Superman, Invisible Man, Piano Man, Time's Man of the Year, (pause for cough) Marlboro Man and, for stargazers, the apocryphal Man in the Moon.

The fellows are all out there, going back at least to Everyman as the focus of a 15th century morality play. As one of our teenage grandsons would crow, "Oh, man, this is cool!"

Permit me to out-cool the kid by introducing Mr. A, The Tomato Man, a oneman cottage industry and my husband of more than 50 years. OK, he says "tuh-mayduh" (he's a San Francisco peninsula city boy) and I say "toe-mah-toe" (my mother was a Londoner).

Nevertheless, we agree like two peas in a pod that, whether the luscious ripe-red food is a veggie or a fruit, as purists insist, all the Big Boys, Beefsteaks, Romas, Early Girls or Sweet 100s deserve better surroundings than those ubiquitously ugly, hard-to-store, environmentally discordant wire cage contraptions.

After much experimentation, often involving hilarity and much if-at-first-you-don't-succeed tenacity, Mr. A's Tomato Towers debuted several years ago. Word-of-mouth has increased the demand for the adjustable supports, handmade of redolent cedar dowels and posts, easily stored, adaptable not only for tomatoes but snow peas, dahlias, cucumbers, gladioli, squash and more.

Some history here. Heart disease halted my hero's business career 25 years ago; he had previously pursued other occupations in the military and education. Periodically, he had made attempts to grow his beloved tomatoes in locales as we literally moved around the globe.

One year, while we were teaching in rural Vermont, he brought home a dozen Big Boy seedlings, having no idea of their ultimately prolific yield.

The school superintendent, a typically laconic Vermonter, just watched with amusement as the city boy tucked the plants in the rich country soil.

Weeks later, we had more tomatoes than a Safeway warehouse. Our family was dangerously close to acidic overdose. Friends were tested by their willingness to take a chunk of the humungous crop off our hands. Once we actually crept up to our priest's house in the village, leaving huge overfilled baskets as we rang the doorbell, running into the summer night (the padre already had a big garden of his own!)

My Tomato Man made another heroic, if now chastened, try a few years later while we were teaching for the government of Guam. The island has four growing seasons, so he began with great hopes of continuing, if modest, tomato production.

Just as the first round objects were enlarging to light green, he accepted a cabled offer to take a principalship again back in Vermont. We would have to leave within a few days. He was bereft, realizing he would not get to see his tomatoes ripen.

While he slept that night, our gagster-in-residence, son Mark, nailed a fat red store tomato to a stake in his dad's garden, feigning excitement as he shouted for his father to witness the botanical miracle!

When serious heart disease dictated Mr. A's reluctant retirement at age 51, I feared what the Japanese call nureochiba - literally, wet, fallen leaves, or husbands who retire and then hang around, getting in the way. But my hero focused generously on assorted volunteer positions: in ICU and cardiology wards; as a math tutor; as a driver for Meals on Wheels. But at some point, he was back to gardening, tentatively, at first.

The idea for his towers evolved as he experimented with ways to support his beloved plants. Soon he had a tower prototype.

A gardening friend offered to try one out that first summer, taking pictures as his tomato seedlings grew. Tower dowels could be continuously adjusted, he found, keeping pace with the burgeoning growth.

Our friend was also a creative kidder who obligingly recalled that I had urged my husband to keep his project exclusively "his thing," leaving me out of the marketing possibilities for his invention (as a writer, I savor my own space and time and I was still determined not to have that aforementioned "nureochiba" on my wifely hands).

So, said friend used tongue-in-tomato wit and his talent for photography and graphics to produce a handsome, laminated poster featuring a mature pair of tomato plants ensconced happily in Mr. A's answer to offensive wire cages. At the bottom, a caveat in small print suggested inquiries to a bogus telephone number: "If Mrs. A answers, mumble something unintelligible and hang up!"

The Tomato Man is now a personable regular at Saturday Market's veggie corner. Take a stroll over.

Of course, be sure to treat yourself to some goodies at the food booths. Oh, forget the fries. Want tomatoes with that?

Patricia Mees Armstrong is a Eugene writer of short fiction, poetry and essays. She has published six volumes of poetry, including her latest, "A Life on Paper."

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