Bananas

In Torts today we were going over different negligence cases. Three cases in a row dealt with banana peels on the ground. I loved it. I drew little pictures of each banana peel in my case book.

The first was in a Massachusetts train station in 1901. The plaintiff was suing the defendant railway company for negligence. He stepped out of the train onto the dock right after it had pulled into the station and slipped on a banana peel. The case made its way to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts where it was heard by then Chief Justice Holmes (who was later one of the most famous US Supreme Court Justices ever and also has a sweet mustache) who said that it was impossible to tell when it had fallen on the ground, and it could have just barely been dropped, so the defendant won.

The next case was in a train station in 1911 but I don't remember where. A woman asked one of the employees of the station where she should go to get to her platform and he told her to follow him. She did and as they were walking, she slipped on a banana peel that the employee had nimbly stepped over. The court ruled that it had been there long enough for an employee to have cleaned it up and the employee escorting the plaintiff obviously saw it was there, due to his artful dodging of it, but he didn't do anything about it, so the railway was found liable. I like that it was described as "gritty, black, with not a spot of yellow on it." Ha ha, 1911...

The third case involved a banana on the ground in an A&P. A woman stepped on it and slipped. The final court dismissed the claim because they said there was no way of telling how long it had been there. It could have been on the ground for thirty seconds or three days. Because she didn't have any proof of negligence on behalf of the store, the court found in favor of the defendant A&P.

All this banana talk got me to thinking about a book I read this summer. Shockingly enough, it was called "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World" by Dan Koeppel.

I can say that it was probably the best book I read this year. I still think about it. Chapter 11 was pretty great: "Why Banana Peels are Funny." But it isn't a gag book or anything. The author has really done his research, has traveled around the world and has succinctly summarized the history of the banana. It is actually a fascinating story too.
For example, the banana we all know and see in the supermarket is called the Cavendish. It was not the banana that Americans knew before 1950. The bananas of Justice Holmes and Twinkle-toes were the Gros Michel. Due to a virus called Panama Disease that affected the soil, virtually every Gros Michel was exterminated by World War II. The Cavendish was immune to the disease so that is what we eat now. You notice we don't get too fancy with our bananas- you don't see a lot of varieties in the West. Just about every banana you will find in the world will be the Cavendish. Crazy. Especially because there are over one thousand varieties. This is just asking for trouble. There is no natural way for a Cavendish to grow. Every Cavendish in the world is a clone of another- they have no utilizable seeds. They are sterile berries. There is a disease going around right now that is affecting the Cavendish and could repeat what happened to Big Mike. The history of bananas is cool too. Cool in a tragic sort of way. The banana has destroyed nations and cultures and caused wars and spawned inventions such as refrigeration. Anyways, it is a great book and I can pretty much guarantee you will learn some cool new facts. It's not like we are taught a whole lot about bananas in school, and it seems as though the banana should have a pretty great story anyways. It is a fairly new fruit for the west.

Also, the author wrote an awesome article about a bike trek he took across China that I read in a biking magazine. I really like this guy.

Also, since you brought it up, I was riding my bike to school and my chain dropped. That isn't so bad on a bike with multiple gears and brakes and a free-wheel because you can just coast like normal and stop with the brakes, then use the rear derailleur to loosen tension to replace the chain on your rings, but on a fixed-gear bike you don’t have a derailleur or multiple gears and your chain is your brake, so dropping a chain = certain death. So I panicked but luckily the chain fell off both front and rear rings, so it just sat next to the rotating cog and didn't kill me. I thought I would have to walk it to a shop to get it fixed but luckily I am a bit of a genius at everything I try so it is all good now. I hope it never ever happens again.