Potato Places

 From our friends at Atlas Obscura -- by way of my favorite librarian -- comes the perfect first post for this blog. Food editor Sam O'Brien offers "a global tuber tour" of 10 Places That Will Take You to Potato Paradise. 

We have driven past one of these sites many times, completely unaware of what we were missing. The Potato Shed Memorial is located at the northern end of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge. Its location amidst in the morass of highway ramps bring to mind the famous New England phrase "you can't get there from here." But we are intrepid enough that we will figure it out!

As with many unusual landmarks, this one is about much more than it seems: the potato sheds were part of a fascinating part of the local landscape that disappeared a year or so before I was born, and that landfill and transportation developments have almost entirely erased. 

We have been to one of the places on O'Brien's list: a  highway rest stop and museum in Idaho, where we enjoyed "free taters for out-of-staters" on a long-ago road trip.

Hayes-Bohs Abroad in 2011

Another site that would be a fitting entry is Potato World in New Brunswick, which our family enjoyed while on a Bridgewaters Project adventure in Maine. 

Lagniappe

Another item that I should include in this inaugural post is some explanation for the Coffee Maven's sudden interest in budayduhs -- again my favorite librarian is involved. The Bridgewater One Book One Community committee has selected Voyage of Mercy for its fall 2022 read. It is a tale both local and global, but nautical and humanitarian. Stephen Puleo (of Dark Tide fame) describes an 1847 humanitarian voyage from Boston to Ireland at the height of the potato famine. The author will be visiting our community to talk about the book, and the committee has asked me to discuss the geography of potatoes more broadly. Thus is Doctor Potato Head -- a.k.a. the Potato Maven -- born!