In Southern Minnesota, my job was to pile sugar beets as they came in from the fields. Truck by truck, twenty-four hours a day, every day—unless it rained too much, and the vehicles got stuck.
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The ideal height of a beet pile is twenty-eight feet. The lengths would eventually become one hundred and fifty yards. As the piles got high and long, I would walk amongst the snaking hills to find the best beets to take home as trophies.
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Sometimes, I remembered the canyons along the border. There I would search for my prize. AÂ rock unlike the others.
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I remember there was a total absence of sound. I was in love with this silence. That is until the helicopters came or the soldiers would pass by— unless it rained too much and the vehicles got stuck. I would lay flat behind a shrub and watch them. If only I had a couple rockets, I would think. Maybe I would have the jump on them and I could make it back before the helicopters came?
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Does it matter?
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No. It’s just beets.
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It’s more and more beets.
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Zachary Loewenstein never meant for things to be like this. He has lived and worked for many years in Lower Luxembourg after having received his Doctoral Degree in Anesthesiology from the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. Zachary is also a successful organic gardener. His favorite bird is Maglan.
A friend spent a summer imagining she had cancer (or some rare disease) because she consumed beets from her garden daily–and didn’t know they’d dye her pee pink. She thought she was suffering from internal bleeding. Eventually she discovered she was only consuming more vitamins!