Health, The Potato Farm, and Teeth

          My father and I don’t speak on the phone often, but, when we do, he fuels the conversations with health–related questions. For example: Am I using sunscreen? Taking my vitamins? Flossing?  The answer to all such questions is, of course, not really. And so, as I chew some sort of hard candy from a Chinese restaurant, I say, “Not really. Are you exercising?"
        "I walk around a whole lot," he says.
        “Oh good,” I say. He may be a senior citizen, but he’s still walking.  For the average American, this implies that he’s in excellent shape and headed for longevity.  But my father is no average American (for starters, his first language was Yiddish).  So the next thing he talks about is his latest health condition. Maybe he had a cancerous piece of skin removed from his nose, or maybe blood vessels burst in his face. Most recently, he’s had a fourth unsuccessful root canal. And, on and off for the past three years, it’s been his expanding stomach:
        “It’s really weird,” he says. “It just keeps growing. My belly button is starting to protrude. I might have a parasite.” Sigh. Going to the doctor again Monday –– maybe needs an operation.

          And then what is there to talk about? Well, many things. Last conversation, I said, "I'm driving myself nuts thinking every dark blue pickup in town is my ex-boyfriend's. I mean it's Montana; every other car on the road is a dark blue pickup. But do they make them any other color?" But even this subject somehow meandered back to health-related questions, debriefings, and precautions. 
          Sometimes he calls only with the pre-cautions: Me: “Hello?” Him: “Don’t eat those tapioca pearls in bubble tea; they have arsenic in them.” Me: “Hello?” Him: “Don’t eat bananas.” Me: “Why?” Him: “They’re saying they’re no good for you.” Me: “Who’s saying?” Him: “Studies.” Sigh. (Love you, Daddy). Once he told me the story of a woman who contracted a disease from eating expired yogurt and had to dwell in a cold, damp, dark house for the rest of her life. Moral of the story was check the expiration dates on dairy.  

            So here I am writing, eating banana and drinking tea with milk squeezed fresh from a goat teat. This blog post wasn’t meant to be about my father’s health but rather about working on the potato farm in April. All I can say is that the only remarkable thing about shipping potatoes out in that barren field in Asseville, Montana were the other workers’ teeth (and lack thereof). The first person I met was a woman about 4.5 feet tall wearing a red, Pepsi Cola t-shirt so long she might have slept in it too. She was chain–eating starbursts –– throwing the wrappers on the ground.
           “My name’s Jackie," she said.  "I haven’t had teeth in twenty years, and I’ve been working potatoes for fourteen.”
           "Cool," I said. "Where'd you get the candy?”
           "In the trailer and there's plenty of it too."  

            Candy is all you had to look forward to during the 1.5-hour rounds of potato–culling broken up by two-minute breaks of candy–bingeing. I can never eat another piece of candy after that week (lie), and I can never eat another potato (also lie). But seriously. Picture standing in front of a conveyor belt under the sun (or in the hail . . . thank you, April in Montana) for eight hours plucking rotting potatoes from the hundreds that come tumbling your way. And the guy working across from you talks too long about his dog that found the body of a woman burning in a sociopath’s backyard. At least I think that’s what he said; the rumble of potatoes was so loud I caught only every other sentence about not just that one murder, but dozens. Finally, I called across the conveyor belt:
              “Hey, Harvey, got any happy stories?” I needed one, single goddamn fairytale to get me through to the next candy–fest.
              “Happy stories? No I don’t got none of those,” he said.
              So I started the alphabet game. In case you’re wondering, Harvey had at least two teeth, which were gold and silver. I know because he smiled once and quickly when, for the letter “h” for “adjectives” during the alphabet game, he came up with “horny.”  And, throughout, the four brothers who own the potato farm stalked around the work site with their lips packed.

            I’ll leave you with this: I have seen more bad teeth in Montana than I have anywhere else in the world.  Here you've got gap teeth, snaggle teeth, brown teeth, yellow teeth, missing teeth, and buckteeth galore. On men and women alike. Is it a cultural thing? Maybe, for many, it’s the result of chew –– ideal for hunting, fishing, and farming. But what do I know? After all, I was born and raised in Boston and the suburbs of Massachusetts. I never met a tobacco–chewer until I moved to Colorado, and my boyfriend at the time removed a tin of Copenhagen and dipped (and I subsequently vomited . . . excellent mutual ending to a relationship). I was also born with perfect teeth, but only a visit to the dentist will reveal the damage done by the potato–farm candy binges of April coupled with little flossing. (Sorry, Daddy).  But, I will have him know, the cough I developed from the potato dust has officially subsided, and it no longer feels like I have a potato growing in my lung. My ex-boyfriend's pickup truck still haunts me. But I have much to look forward to; in the fall, I plan to help my new boyfriend pack out an elk. He, too, by the way, has funky teeth as does the goat farmer Melvyn who kills gophers with juicy fruit gum. Cheers.