Grapes - A New Line of Thought

 

 

From: Oxsan
Date: 08 Oct 2001
Time: 18:40:22

I love grapes. Two days ago I bought a perforated plastic bag of grapes at the supermarket and carried them home and put them in the refrigerator. Today I decided that I would eat the grapes as an appetizer before my normal fish supper. As I got them out of the refrigerator I thought of the time that my daughter had refused to eat grapes at home because she was protesting against California grape growers at the request of Cesar Chavez. As I took them over to the sink to wash them I noticed that they were grown in Chile. Imagine a country of 3,675,031 square miles area, most of which would support grape growth, importing grapes from Chile. Why?

Now, I have lived through every war of the twentieth century fought by the U.S. except the Boxer Rebellion and the World War I. In none of those wars did I ever at any time feel threatened when in the United States. But when I looked at that bag of Chilean grapes I had a creepy feeling. I had just heard over the radio that a second case of anthrax had been reported in Florida from the same office building as the first case reported a week or so ago--and the guy who got it this time worked in the mail room. I was just about to wash the grapes when this image appears before me of Omar Ahtief (probably misspelled), who is Usama bin Laden's Operations Chief, explaining to Usama the new project he is working on. Omar says, " You see, we buy this old Greek freighter for a song and sail it over to Chile and offer cut rates to take a load of grapes to the U.S. We register the freighter in Liberia or Panama. Because of our rates we get a quick load of black Chilean grapes in those perforated plastic bags and slatted crates, and on the way to San Francisco we spray the whole lot with anthrax. The U.S. Feds will search us for drugs but they don't have dogs that can smell...". So it was going when I started to wash the grapes and saw the little spots of white powder on the grapes. I went and got my surgical gloves and my 7X loupe, but with that the white powder just looked like little spheres. It was probably just yeast, which is natural on all grapes, but after all who wants to eat yeasty grapes and have the great Cesar Chavez to have done his work in vain. So I threw them in the garbage and decided to have a glass of good Cabernet Sauvignon instead. GUESS WHAT? The wine was labeled in small print "grown and bottled in the valle centrale of Chile." Bastards couldn't even spell "central valley". But it was pretty good wine.