Jeff Caplan’s Minute of News: Hands off the garlic!

May 3, 2022, 4:32 PM | Updated: 4:34 pm

The Gilroy Garlic people have a beef with an asparagus committee. Photo: Canva

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Editor’s note: This is an editorial piece. An editorial, like a news article, is based on fact but also shares opinions. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and are not associated with our newsroom.

It’s funny how people can go crazy as soon as they join a committee.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival. The central California community is the epicenter of garlic production here in the U.S. And a generation ago they started this quirky festival that celebrated all things garlic.

People flocked by the 10s of thousands for freshly harvested garlic cloves, garlic ice cream, bubble gum, you name it.

But now the festival is no more. There was a mass shooting a few years ago. Then the pandemic. And new homes are encroaching on the open fields that served as the parking lots. The festival – this quirky piece of Americana — is canceled.

But there’s hope. To fill the void, the people who run the Asparagus Festival have offered to create a new Garlic Festival 100 miles from Gilroy.

And here comes the part about the committee. You see, committee leaders are furious about these Asparagus carpetbaggers taking advantage of the good garlic committee

The Garlic people have beef. These asparagus people? They barely know where garlic comes from.

Do you by the way? Is it a tree? A bush?

The asparagus offer to takeover the garlic party left a bitter and slightly acidic taste in everyone’s mouth. One that pares well Marinara sauce. But Gilroy leaders vow they’ll never bend to Big Asparagus.

So as California faces a mega-drought that’s left the actual farmers begging for water, two vegetable committees are fiddling as California burns.

(And by the way, garlic cloves are bulbs that grow underground._