Oswald Has His Say...Oswald Has His Say...
As you are all no doubt aware, every morning I start my day with a half of a grapefruit. What you may not know, as I have rarely had the oportunity to mention it, is that I have been enjoying this delightful citrus since 1986, when I was first introduced to it while attending a business symposium, related to my work in the plumbing fixture industry, at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando Florida. While I had seen these seemingly oversized oranges in the produce section of the supermarket many times before then, and I was, of course, aware of their comical reputation for ejecting acidic sprays of juice into the eyes of those seated next to the consumer -- a comedic pratfall that has been featured in the cinematic offerings of many well-known vaudevillians, although not nearly as ubiquitous a fruit-based gag as the banana-peel slip -- I had never, for reasons that I am not quite able to explain, ventured to try one for myself. But that day in 1986, when I threw caution to the wind and reached for the grapefruit half while in line at the breakfast buffet, forever altered the course of my mornings. Granted, the change was not drastic -- for many weeks afterwards I would intersperse grapefruit consumption with cereals, eggs, and other dishes more familiar to me; but eventually I found myself returning more and more to that juicy, pink delicacy that God saw fit to equip with it's own built-in bowl, until, somewhere around 1992, grapefruit became the sole source of my morning nourishment. (I should note that I do not place a cherry or grape in the center of my grapefruit half. While that stereotypical serving arrangement may look good in cooking magazine photography spreads, it is much too fussy and not worth the trouble, and I have never actually met a person who has served their grapefruit this way.)
I mention all this only so that you may understand that I have been keenly aware of grapefruit prices for many years, and thus am able to see trends that would otherwise go unnoticed. In recent months, I had noticed that grapefruit prices have been rising beyond their usual seasonal range of fluctuation in a most suspicious way. At first I suspected that CostCo -- where I purchase all my grapefruit -- was engaged in price gouging, possibly in an attempt to take advantage of these uncertain times, when the horrors of war make men ever more desirous for those little comforts, such as afforded by morning grapefruits, that seem so trivial in less trying times, but that now lighten the heavy burden of the soul and allow one the courage to continue even when all hope seems futile. However, further investigation as shown to me that grapefruit prices are on a rise, however imperceptibly to the casual grapefruit consumer, across all sectors of the produce retail industry, so I must apologize for my hasty jump to blame the fine men and women of CostCo. Seeking answers, I then turned my attention to Florida, the source of most grapefruit sold in the United States, and ironically the birthplace of my love for the fruit in 1986, which I believe I mentioned above. As I made calls to the various Floridian growers, asking them pointed questions in the face of persistent stonewalling, a realization began to dawn on me as sure as the Sun dawns on the plump, luscious grapefruit in those fields in far-off Florida: Our nation's grapefruit harvest is under a subtle yet concerted attack by foreign interests!
Whenever the growers tried to answer my questions about soaring prices, they always implicated the increased production costs. Yet, the Sun's rays are still free and the Lord still provides us the miracle of life at no cost, save that which He paid for us on the Cross. Where are the increased costs coming from? "Labor" was almost always the answer, although the growers seemed oddly hesitant to admit this. As I researched the situation further I learned that grapefruit needs to be picked by hand, which requires a large workforce, typically made up of itinerant workers of Mexican heritage. It was then that I began to realize that a cartel of robber-barons situated somewhere in Mexico, working through networks of intimidation, were contriving to increase labor costs by encouraging the workers to unionize, employing the carrot of false promises of a Socialist Utopia and the stick of threats against the workers' families back in Mexico. This would in turn undermine the grapefruit harvest, leading to a grapefruit shortage, resulting in panic and calls for replacement of our leadership, which would set back the war against Terror.
Would it be too sensationalistic to suggest that Osama Bin Laden might be behind all this, pulling the strings of the Mexican robber-barons to suit his own evil ends? Perhaps, but I do not think that we can rule out this possibility; the cell like nature that the Mexican Cartel would need to operate under in order to effect its control over grapefruit production is at least based on Al-Qaeda methodology. At any rate, thanks to my intimate awareness of grapefruit price trends, I have uncovered a plot against our nation by anti-American forces while still in its infancy. There is still time for Homeland Security and the Department of Agriculture, whom I have contacted with my findings, to act to keep grapefruit prices under control and to disrupt the foreign influence over this important crop. I just hope that my call does not go unheeded until it is too late; how dearly I would miss my morning grapefruit.
