Cranberry Red: A Novel

47. Healthy Always Cranberries

199 Ben Wesley always liked October. But this year he was not enjoying the month at all. Each evening he arrived home from work exhausted. He had no time to gaze at the fall colors that were in full peak by midmonth and beginning to wane as the days ticked by. No time to go fishing with Lars Olson. Fishing in October, on a sunny warm afternoon, was usually outstanding, and besides, the fish bit more often than they did during the dog days of summer. It’s not that he wasn’t outdoors, because he had been driving from cranberry grower to cranberry grower throughout western Ames County, and into Wood, Portage, Adams, and even as far as Monroe County, where cranberry acreage had been expanding in recent years. He visited with cranberry growers, one after the other, without invitation. Sometimes he felt he was intruding, getting in the way. These October days were busy ones, as cranberry growers were in the midst of their fall harvest. But it had been his instruction from Dr. Phillips to talk with the growers, tell them about Cranberry Red, show them the treated cranberries , explain to them the tremendous health benefits of the new Healthy Always Cranberries brand. He handed out a recently printed Osborne publication that used a question-and-answer approach to Cranberry Red and its benefits. The common response went something like this: “We’ll wait to see how these Healthy Always Cranberries do on the market. We don’t want to buy any of this Cranberry Red stuff and then be stuck with another cost Healthy Always Cranberries 47 and no return for our investment.” That was the gist of what he heard and he heard it often. He would return home each evening totally spent, but not surprised at the growers’ response. He had worked with cranberry growers in Ames County for twenty years. He knew them, knew their families , knew how they made decisions. They weren’t going to jump at something new, something like Cranberry Red, until they knew a whole lot more about the product. On his way home from the office one of these late October afternoons, Ben stopped at the Buy It Here grocery in Willow River, where his family had shopped for years. He couldn’t miss the huge sign in the window. “Arrived today: HEALTHY ALWAYS CRANBERRIES. A new health food from the International Farm-Med Company and developed by Osborne University researchers. Cranberries with twice the health benefits of regular cranberries.” Pictured was a cranberry bog, Ben couldn’t recognize which one, with children holding a pail of cranberries and their smiling parents standing behind. Everyone the picture of good health. When he stood in line to check out with his basket of purchases—a gallon of milk, a bag of lettuce, a loaf of bread, and some peach yogurt (low fat, Beth said to buy)—Ben saw people in line with bags of the new cranberries . The fact that the berries cost nearly twice as much as traditional cranberries didn’t seem to deter them in the least. The store had earlier put a two-bag limit on purchases. With one or two exceptions, everyone in line had two bags. On his way home from the store, Ben continued to wonder about these new cranberries and the possibility that they had been rushed to the market too quickly. He had been reminded by his superiors at Osborne University , more than once, that he was still thinking like a state university person. “Problem with those state universities,” said Dr. Quinton Foley, and he said it often, “is they take way too long to share the results of their research with the public. By the time a state university’s findings become available, most people have lost interest in what they were researching.” Ben knew better than to argue with Foley, but every time he heard Foley say something like this, he bit his tongue. Most new research findings deserve more time, more thought, and a lot more testing, was Ben’s 200 Healthy Always Cranberries 201 Healthy Always Cranberries position. He wondered if maybe Cranberry Red and these newly treated cranberries shouldn’t fall into that category. Only a week later, the Ames County Argus began to receive letters applauding Osborne University and their new research product: Dear Editor: I want you to...