PDA

View Full Version : home grown tomatoes - hmmmm



mylanta
07-09-2002, 07:36 PM
This will probably sound a bit like Gallager or Stephen Wright or Andy Rooney....

Driving home today, I passed a road-side stand with a sign advertising its "HOME GROWN TOMATOES". Does anyone really think that they were grown in a home? Wouldn't you need a whole lot of sun lamps for that? So they aren't grown in the home - they were grown on a farm or a garden. Do garden grown tomatoes taste different from farm grown tomatoes? Is there an opposite of a farm or garden grown tomato - a factory produced tomato? Are there such things? I guess you could have tomatoes grown far away and trucked in and those probably wouldn't taste as good as just-picked tomatoes, but the sign didn't say that now did it? Were these tomatoes grown at the home of the guy minding the stand or someone else's? Would it make a difference?

Reminds me of when I drive in the north Georgia mountains and we pass those road side stands with the guys offering boiled peanuts and several of the letters on the signs are backwards. Am I supposed to think that since he can't form letters properly that he has better merchandise or that his prices will be lower since he has a learning disability (we used to say he was dumb, but that is not p.c. any more).

And why when people have signs for Yard Sales or Garage Sales, do they never ever intend to sell the Yard or the Garage? Shouldn't the signs really say "Low Cost Junk Redistribution"?

Guy
07-09-2002, 08:52 PM
The funniest thing is driving around in the Montreal area and seeing a garage sale sign in English. That's because in French, "Garage Sale" precisely means "dirty garage"! Even better is when they try to make it bilingual by writing "Vente de Garage Sale" (usually vertically), which if interpreted in French only means "dirty garage for sale"...

[Edited by Guy on 07-09-2002 at 09:04 PM]

mylanta
07-10-2002, 09:38 AM
I don't know french. Are you saying that "SALE" in french means dirty?

Seems like different parts of the country (sorry, I don't know Canada's customs) use different terms. There are garage sales, tag sales, carport sales, etc.

Pnueattitude
07-11-2002, 12:27 AM
Have you ever tasted a lab grown tomato?

Guy
07-11-2002, 08:18 AM
Yes mylanta, "sale" means dirty in French. Then there is "salé" (with an accented "e") which means salted. Of course, almost all people here are bilingual to a certain degree and know what "Garage sale" really means, but it's still funny when you stop to think about it. Bilingual signs like I mentioned are quite common because of the way adjectives and nouns are ordered in phrases. For example, instead of putting a sign with both "CHAMPLAIN BRIDGE" and "PONT CHAMPLAIN", they will instead put "pont CHAMPLAIN bridge" to save space.

rayr
07-11-2002, 08:35 AM
hard to beat Jersey Farm Grown Tomatoes!!!!!