Go Bananas!

By W. Nicholas Knight, MHC Council Chair

We have no bananas in Shakespeare! But as a hobby for this Shakespearean I am into model railroading. The freight trains I model or imitate are ways of thinking about our history and about the relationships between people and goods. Next year the Council’s partnership with the Smithsonian will bring the exhibit, “Key Ingredients,” on a tour of six Missouri towns, and we will extend the statewide discussion of food and culture with an annual program theme on “America The Bountiful.” Hence, bananas are on my mind and on one of my trains!

I just returned from Wal-Mart with bananas in my hand and information from the Produce Manager – nothing in all of their stores is a bigger seller, at 29 cents a pound, than -- you guessed it -- bananas! The history of this phenomenal economic and public health story has prompted me to devote part of my basement railroad system to an Illinois Central (IC) express, refrigerator freight from my harbor to the metropolis.

Today we take this fruit for granted, but it did not exist in the United States – certainly not in the Midwest – until the IC transported it at a higher priority than, and on the same tracks as, the famed City of New Orleans passenger train from the Gulf of Mexico to Chicago. Bananas got the IC through the Great Depression and keeps the IC today from disappearing into Conrail and AMTRAK.

Bananas were enjoyed only along the Gulf, and then, later, out of seaports from banana boats or freighters from South America. Bananas are abundant, cheap (an apple will cost you three times as much) but fragile and needing refrigeration. A banana transportation system would provide employment eventually for pickers, ice packers and packers into delivery trucks, truck drivers, schedulers, manufacturers, repair people, crate builders, label designers, printers, painters, ad writers, and stockers at grocery stores. The “Main Line of Mid-America” – Illinois Central – was the key to this on an exceptional north-south route. Envisioned as early as 1836, pushed for by Senator Stephen A. Douglas and the first recipient of land grants by President Millard Fillmore in 1850, the IC reached Cairo in 1889, came up to St. Louis in 1895, where a connector from Chicago arrived in 1899. Casey Jones was killed on the IC (April 30, 1900) at Vaughn, Mississippi en route to New Orleans.

Running from the Gulf to its sprawling connections for Midwest farms, the IC built up experience in handling perishable goods. The banana became an essential revenue source. During the 20s and 30s the banana traffic blossomed. “During 1947, IC moved a record 52,757 cars of bananas making it the leading banana carrier in all the world.” (Mike Schafer, Classic American Railroads) Speed and priority were key to delivering the green fruit, and IC refrigerator trains fit the bill. That is why this Shakespearean has the banana express on his railroad roster.

Will bananas always be plentiful and cheap? We take the supply for granted and we don’t think much about trains. But diesel engines are about to be regulated for air pollution and a fungus threatens the banana trade unless the plantations are subjected to heavy spraying with fungicides or possibly explore bio-engineering to correct susceptibility. Fortunately for the model population in my basement, the trains are electric and none of my little people eat the bananas in the villages and towns that live forever. But they have a library and a theatre in those towns, where I like to imagine that Shakespeare is on the shelf or the stage.

To Unsubscribe: Click "Reply" and write "Unsubscribe" in the subject field.

Published monthly by the Missouri Humanities Council, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Federal agency.
http://www.mohumanities.org
Phone: (800) 357-0909
Fax: (314) 781-9681
543 Hanley Industrial Court
Suite 201
St. Louis, MO 63144