Word: vidalia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bill Ledford, editor of the weekly paper in Vidalia, Ga., popped into the Vidalia Chamber of Commerce the other day with an idea about a porcelain onion. He told Dick Walden, the executive vice president of the Chamber, that he had met an artist in Charleston, S.C., and that he harbored a notion to commission her to fire him up some onions. "She makes squash, beans, everything," said Ledford, a little excitement rising in his voice. "She even makes an onion," he continued, "but it doesn't look like our onion. It's not flat and squatty enough...
Ledford, his eye on a buck, would like to market the artificial onion. The thing was, he explained, he wanted to put the registered trademark of the Vidalia sweet onion, a cartoonish character called the Yumion (sort of the Pillsbury Doughboy of the onion racket), on his product, and for that he needed permission from the Chamber. Walden said he would bring it up at the next board meeting, but he suspected Ledford "could bank on it." The editor bounded out, a happy...
Onion, onion, onion is all the word around here. If one has not yet heard of the Vidalia sweet onion, one will. In the past few years, knowledge of its succulence has table-hopped through gourmet circles all over the land. The Vidalia (pronounced Vy-dale-yuh) is status, and with its fame has come its nemesis: imitators. "The imitators are unscrupulous," says Walden. "I fully expect to hear somebody's packaging cabbages out there and calling them Vidalia onions...
Dealers from Alabama, Florida, Texas and other parts of Georgia are marketing their onions as Vidalia onions. The reason is simple: the Vidalia, because it is mild and because it has become enormously popular, fetches as much as three times the price of ordinary onions. The Vidalia is a yellow Granex type F-1 hybrid, a variety grown throughout the country. Grown elsewhere, however, the same onion can bring tears to the eyes. Grown here, it is called sweet-and is. The former presidential press secretary contends it will not make "your nose run, your heart burn, or your sweetheart...