How an Anthropomorphic Onion Shaped my Childhood
Growing up in the rural south has many layers.
I grew up in a small house, in a very small town on an even smaller chunk of Appalachia. It was just a tourist town, for the most part, but things tended to stay small there, and no one expected us to leave this town. And yet, every fall, folks from around the country flocked to North Georgia to appreciate the little orange-yellow leaves painting the skyline in their shiny, non-rusted cars. Things were just small in my tiny hometown — including our school system.
In fact, it wasn’t until high school, around the time I was a sophomore and my parents had begun to discuss possibly moving when I found out that a county in Georgia could have more than one school system. How could that be? You wouldn’t know anyone, or hardly anyone, every time you graduated from primary to elementary to middle to high school. Preposterous. Terrifying.
Normal.
I rejected that normal — it did not belong to me. And, from primary school to high school, there were very few changes. I graduated with the same people who picked their nose and discarded the evidence under the lip of their school desk when we were in the 2nd grade. During graduation, the boy who used to kick open hallway doors with feet clad with faux leather cowboy boots snuck vodka into a Gatorade bottle. I think, to some degree, we all hated each other. After 12 years, we were all more than a little ready to part ways.
But, whether I liked it or not, I still shared a lot of the same experiences with my classmates. One, by far, among many stories I could share, tends to boggle the minds of anyone who did not grow up in a small rural town in Georgia. It is that of an anthropomorphic onion creature who regularly visited us as children.
Georgia may be known for a variety of staples. Growing up, our principal in Middle School would say the same thing over and over again: “It’s a great day to be alive and livin’ in the Peach state.” Ironically, Florida sold the fruit much more abundantly than our coast ever could. Peanuts, were also quite popular as they flourished in the sandy dirt of South Georgia. However, the southern half of Georgia has a diamond that not many people are familiar with: The Vidalia Onion.
Named after its city of origin, the Vidalia onion “has a mild flavor, a uniquely flat shape, and a relatively high sugar content.” And, despite Vidalia and Blairsville being 6 hours away from one another, the onion influence affected us all. From April to August, Vidalia onions would come in mass on trucks to our local grocery store customers would beg cashiers for some idea of whether or not the store would get another truckload. Onion panic was real. Onion panic was typical in Blairsville.
Years later, when I began my freshman year of college, I realized that not every child grew up being raised by Big Onion, like me and my classmates were in school. We had authors of all sorts of children’s books come and read to us throughout the year. As a county with below-average literacy rates, we were a primary target for authors and illustrators of various books. Sometimes, I think we were just a good story, a good photo opportunity. I can see the news headlines now:
“Popular Children’s Author Reads to Poor Illiterate Mountain Children of North Georgia”
At least, that’s how it could feel sometimes. Cameras often swarmed the reading sessions. Photographers prompted us to smile more as we listened to the author read. It was difficult for us to focus with the bright flashes of a Nikon framing our peripherals.
The book, The Onion Ambassador, was written by Rhonda Frost Knight and illustrated by Pam Alexander. Honestly, I could not tell you the protagonist of any other book that my classmates and I read. But, this one is by far the most memorable of them all. Although it might read like a fever dream, this is the actual plot of the book:
The story begins by following the humble, normal lives of an older couple farming sweet Vidalia Onions — nothing out of the usual yet. They share a raw onion together, obviously a match made in sweet onion heaven. However, their lives are changed forever when they come upon unusually large, green tendrils erupting from the soil.
With four hands gripping the leafy protrusions, Yumion, a half-man, half onion humanoid creature is birthed from the soil of Vidalia, Ga. Wearing only a pair of blue denim overalls, white gloves, and brown steel-toed boots, the onion-man stood before the once normal midwife/farmers. Once he is sentient, he decides to immediately dedicate his life to growing non-sentient Vidalia Onions for the people of Georgia and beyond to enjoy.
I can still remember my classmates and I, knees knocking against one another in the cramped semi-circle. Our teachers stood stoically behind the outer circle, watching for the occasional whisper or suspicious hand gesture. It has been well over a decade since I sat next to the same people I would later graduate with on the floor of our elementary school.
As a child, nothing was surprising nor shocking about the premise of this story. In fact, it wasn’t until I graduated high school and began my undergraduate degree that I began to question the often unusual stories that built my childhood. To be sure it was a real memory, I polled my former classmates on social media a few months ago. Each one confirming this odd, onion-based experience was something we all had in common.
Was it all Georgia propaganda? Did the book serve to keep our interest in the state so that we didn’t flee to more alluring cities in the future? I am not wholly sure. Vidalia and North Georgia were several hours apart, although onion-panic could be felt throughout the state when the crop was finally distributed to grocers. As I grow older, I find myself appreciating the experiences that appeared normal to me, but odd or unique to others. The same experiences I often took for granted as I desperately tried to distance myself from the small town where I grew up.
Recently, I found myself falling into a pattern of writing solely about how mundane life has become. I often wonder what it would be like to have more fantastic experiences that seemed palatable for readers like traveling across the world or dining at Michelin star restaurants. And yet, though the experience appears to be only a slice of my life, it’s comparably more unique than some of the most fantastic adventures the world has to offer.
Surely a period of my life I shall not forget.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work! Did you have any unique traditions in your school(s) growing up? Do you feel like this experience had a positive, negative, or neutral affect on your childhood? If so, I would love to hear about it in the comment section!
