It’s 1779. Somewhere outside Paris. A crowd gathers at the edge of a fenced field. Torchlight flickers across their faces. Inside the perimeter, men with muskets pace back and forth. Armed guards. Hired.
To protect potatoes. You read that right.
For decades, French peasants wouldn’t touch the lumpy tubers. Why? Rumor said potatoes caused leprosy. Your neighbor grows them? Stay away. Your soup has one? Throw it out. Then came Antoine-Augustin Parmentier – a pharmacist who’d survived on potatoes as a prisoner of war. He knew the truth: this ugly vegetable could stop famines cold.
But knowledge wasn’t enough. He needed drama. So he planted a field. Not huge. Unremarkable soil. Then he did something strange: he ordered guards to protect it day and night. Official-looking. Very serious. Locals stared. Why guard ordinary food?
That’s when Parmentier whispered to his men: “Accept small bribes. Look the other way… after dark.”
Within days, people snuck past the sleepy guards, dug up the “forbidden” tubers, and smuggled them home. They’d stolen what they once feared. By 1795, potatoes covered French fields. Bread riots faded.
New Dance Craze! The Tator Digger
A nation ate – thanks to a pharmacist who understood one simple truth about humans: Tell someone not to touch something. Then guard it. And watch them risk everything for it. The irony? The guards weren’t keeping peasants out. They were keeping curiosity in.
Thanks to History Vault for the back story.
Granny was rather attractive in her younger days. But time took its toll.
ReplyDeleteFor a Granny she looked just fine.
DeleteAuthentic, too. Many things in "hillbilly" comedy started out as jokes and then ignorant people thought they were true, but I really did know a little tiny woman who wore long skirts, wore her white hair in a bun, was shorter than I was after age ten, and could keep up with just about anybody on any job. She wasn't called Granny, though. She went to the church that rejected all titles, even of kinship, and used everybody's given name--hers was Ollie.
Now we know to thank Antoine-Augustin Parmentier for convincing peasants to eat potatoes leading to the invention of French Fries
ReplyDeleteBut although Granny was authentic, that dance is not. At least I never saw anybody dig potatoes that way. They're not deep in the ground. We used to scrape the soil away with a hoe, GENTLY, no need to chop into a potato if it can be avoided, then stoop over and pick up the potatoes with our hands.
ReplyDelete