But all those years, I would gather up my friends and retreat to the old family farm in Maryland, to wade in the stream and pick sweet corn and peas, and Brandywine tomatoes.

And when picked young, sliced, brushed with olive oil and grilled, their flavor is as memorable as the first Brandywine tomato.

Or the Brandywine tomato, an heirloom variety with a taste you thought was lost with childhood?

A seed from a Brandywine tomato, for instance, will not revert to some puny, tasteless or disease-prone ancestor in its past.

Futtsu Black, a ribbed, flat squash that looks as if someone sat on it, is not likely to arouse the same excitement as say, a ripe, two-pound Brandywine tomato.

The Brandywine tomatoes are hitting their heads against the fluorescent tubes of the grow lights.

He subtracted from that $344, the market value of the fruits and vegetables he produced that year, excluding his beloved Brandywine tomatoes.

THE Brandywine tomato is what started the whole thing.

Goodbye, beautiful Brandywine tomatoes.

For vegetable gardeners who have never sunk their teeth into a Brandywine tomato or a Moon and Stars watermelon, how about a collection of seeds from Seed Savers Exchange; www.seedsavers.org or (563) 382-5990.