The article below was published in the daily newspaper The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, page 4, February 10, 1980.
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Housewives swear they are as tender and tatsy as normal sized vegetables
SAN DIEGO (UPI) -- Every now and then Bill Robinson takes the 10-pound onion out of his freezer and contemplates it.
Behind the gargantuan vegetable lies the strange tale, difficult to believe, of the wonder farmers from outer space.
Even if the explanation is nonsense, there is no denying the reality of the onion, or the photographs Robinson has of cabbages 3 feet wide and collard greens up to 5 feet long.
Robinson is the information officer for the San Diego police Department. Reporters generally give him high marks for credibility.
It was while vacationing in Mexico, Robinson said, that he was introduced to farmer Jose Carmen Garcia, a copyright report in San Diego Home and Garden magazine.
Garcia's produce is the wonder of the marketplace in Valle de Santiago, a village 280 miles northwest of Mexico City near Irapuato, he said. Townspeople gather to marvel at his eight pound onions, cabbages weighting from 44 to 60 pounds, and collard greens as big as palm fronds. Housewives swear they are as tender and tasty as normal-sized vegetables.
Yet, Garcia, 50, plows his 3-acre plot behind a mule or a horse, just like his neighbors, buys the same seed at the village general store, and does not use fertilizers.
A local photographer, Oscar Arredondo, intrigued by a radish the size of a softball asked Garcia his secret.
Garcia told him that in 1947, as a youth of 17 struggling to make ends meet on the farm inherited from his father, he met a stranger, who looked and talked like a Mexican peasant.
The stranger said he had been held captive by tall, fair humanoids in a tunnel beneath a nearby volcano. His captors spoke unintelligible gibberish, he said, and lived on the outsize vegetables.
He said he had memorized their magic formula; which he sketched on a scrap of paper. He told Garcia to concentrate on the symbols and that after a period of time, the "message" would become clear. Then he walked away.
After several sleepless nights, Garcia got the revelation - whatever it was - planted the seeds and has produced gigantic vegetables ever since.
Farmer Jose Carmen Garcia (at right in photo) and a friend show off one of the gigantic cabbages he grows near Irapuato, Mexico, as the result of a "magic" formula (below) he says belongs to mysterious "humanoids."
UPI
