A few days back, one of the superiors here came up and asked me if the next day I could go with a brother to pick up the fruit and vegetables. I thought it would be a quick trip around town so I said “sure.”
Brother tells me to eat lunch early so we can leave while everyone else begins lunch. We pull out, take the loop 1/3 the way around Rome and go onto a highway for a while, After about an hour it becomes a two-lane highway but we continue, passing through a dozen traffic circles.
Finally, we pull into a small warehouse in a town called Fondi. Brother led me in where about 5 people were sorting and packing carrots into cellophane packages after they went through a big mechanical washer and peeler. The man doing the initial sort at the end of the washer turned it off for a minute and came over to shake our hands – evidently he was the owner – and showed us a few boxes of carrots he wanted to give to us.
Passing across the street, we entered a fruit packing warehouse that was noticeably larger – the owner was walking around overseeing a few dozen employees rather than grabbing fruit. He too had a few boxes of oranges, lemons and pears for us. At a third place we were given a palate of potatoes.
Driving on a little further, we entered the wholesale produce market through a security gate. Inside trucks and palate jacks moved every which way. We visited about ten of the wholesalers who each gave us between two and twenty boxes of fruit and vegetables: tomatoes, eggplant, radishes, plums, lettuce, you name it.
By the time we left the last one and started for home, we had spent 3 hours in Fondi. It is amazing that all these men in the low-margin industry of produce packing and wholesaling are so generous as to give us all the fruit and vegetables we need.
We always have fresh fruits and vegetables in the seminary and I figured somebody took care of it. Now I know how it is done I think I will appreciate them that much more.
