Visit more playful potato exhibits including potato heads and potato humor.

Potato Historic Site:   The World Trade Center & Potato Futures
Remembered

 

 

 

 

Future prices of round white potatoes were the only vegetable commodity traded on The New York Mercantile Exchange, a part of The World Trade Center complex until 9/11/01. Here's a brief history.

After Germany invaded Paris in 1940, wheat open interest dropped 37 million bushels in just six days as prices plummeted on the idea that an Allied surrender might bring the war to a quick conclusion. According to data collected by the Commodity Exchange Authority, no corn trading occurred on U.S. markets from July 1943 through July 1944, with just one million bushels (200 contracts) exchanging hands in August 1944. The soybean futures market was closed from March 1943 through July 1947.

In New York, NYMEX hit a string of trouble in the 1970s that nearly closed the exchange. It began with the default of nearly 50 million pounds of potatoes on the May 1976 contract, which alienated producers, members and regulators. Potato volume dropped 45 percent versus 1975 and membership values plummeted to $5,000 from $47,000. Despite reforms to the contract and exchange procedures, another crisis struck three years later when stocks delivered against the March 1979 contract did not pass inspection; the exchange acted quickly to suspend trading in the March contract and liquidated the April and May offerings. (NYMEX delisted this potato contract in 1987, and introduced an improved version in 1996.

The NY Mercantile Exchange trading floor and offices were located in the World Trade Center complex destroyed on September 11, 2001. The trading center has since relocated elsewhere in the city.

In the 17th and early 18th century, the World Trade Center site was farmland originally settled by Dutch and Belgian colonists. Potatoes were most certainly one of their most important crops. The Irish Hunger Memorial is nearby. It recalls the 19th century Irish Potato Famine and features an authentic 1820 Irish cottage.

Irish Hunger Memorial, Vesey Street and North End Avenue, Manhattan, NYC

The Memorial represents a rural Irish landscape with an abandoned stone cottage, stone walls, fallow potato fields and the flora on the north Connacht wetlands. It is both a metaphor for the Great Irish Famine and a reminder that hunger today is often the result of lack of access to land.

The 96’ x 170’ Memorial, designed by artist Brian Tolle, contains stones from each of Ireland’s 32 counties and is elevated on a limestone plinth. Along the base are bands of texts separated by layers of imported Kilkenny limestone. The text, which combines the history of the Great Famine with contemporary reports on world hunger, is cast as shadow onto illuminated frosted glass panels.

 

 

"Very few words have a birthday so precise, and so precisely known, as couch potato. It was on July 15, 1976, we are told, that couch potato came into being, uttered by Tom Iacino of Pasadena, California, during a telephone conversation. He was a member of a Southern California group humorously opposing the fads of exercise and healthy diet in favor of vegetating before the TV and eating junk food (1973). Because their lives centered on television--the boob tube (1966)--they called themselves boob tubers. Iacino apparently took the brilliant next step and substituted potato as a synonym for tuber. Thinking of where that potato sits to watch the tube, he came up with couch potato.

Or so the story goes, as told in the subsequent registration of Couch Potato as a trademark. In any case, when the new phrase reached the ears of Robert Armstrong, another member of the boob tubers, he drew a cartoon of a potato on a couch,

formed a club called the Couch Potatoes, registered the trademark and began merchandising Couch Potato paraphernalia, from T shirts to dolls. He published a newsletter called The Tuber's Voice: The Couch Potato Newsletter

and a book, Dr. Spudd's Etiquette for the Couch Potato.

If the story ended there, couch potato would have been as passing a fad as the "pet rock" (1975) of the same vintage. But since the 1970s the tube has grown more alluring and the couch potato culture more compelling, especially with the 1980s invention of the zapper (1985), or remote control. No longer a cartoon character, the couch potato is now one of us."---Answers.com

Wordsmith Radio adds this: "The term couch potato has been with us long enough now that a dictionary editors recognize it as a permanent member of our lexicon. A couch potato, according to the American Heritage College Dictionary, is "a person who spends much time sitting or lying down, usually watching television.

Taken with the name and the concept, the group of TV addicts got off the couch to appear in the 1979 "Doo-Dah Parade," a parody of the Tournament of Roses event held in Pasadena. Assembing themselves on a float carrying TVs and "ceremonial couches," the couch potatoes lounged passively, unashamedly watching television for the duration of the parade.

Encouraged by the Doo-Dah crowd's enthusiastic support, the couch potatoes trademarked their name, marketing bumper stickers, caps, and stuffed couch potato dolls, even publising a newsletter called The Tuber's Voice: The Couch Potato's Newsletter.

And why the potato emblem for the couch lifestyle? Lumpy, heavy, and inert, the tuber lounges on its soft divan, training its many eyes on the television screen, for endless hours.

Steve Krupp's Curio Shop has more: Most people use the term "couch potato" (for habitual TV-viewers) without awareness of its origin. Cartoonist/musician Bob Armstrong invented the term.

Self portrait of cartoonist and Couch Potato entrepreneur Bob Armstrong
Photo credit for button.

Armstrong co-founded the original Couch Potatoes as a fraternal organization of admitted TV-worshippers in his native Pasadena CA. He was also smart enough to trademark the term. So when ubiquitous TV Guide (with its enormous '70s circulation) trumpeted the odd fez-wearing Potatoes in a major article, and the wire services followed, "couch potato" became an instant part of the American language. And Bob, until pirates wore him down, made a nice little living licensing the trademark for Coleco dolls and other merchandise.

Couch Potato doll by Coleco, circa 1980's, USA, image credit

The Potatoes were an unabashedly all-male club but under spousal pressure formed an auxiliary club for women called the Couch Tomatoes (motto: "Equal Rights to the Couch.") Armstrong sold C.P. and Couch Tomato memberships which included nifty buttons, created under commission from Kitchen Sink.

 

Couch Potatoes - The society for the prolonged viewing of television. The Couch Potatoes organization feels that "in a country where there are more homes with televisions than with indoor plumbing," it was time for television watchers to "come out of the closet and lie down and be counted." Their motto (emblazoned on official T-shirts worn while watching the tube) read: "Sic Semper Potatum Reclinus." Their official emblem (circular in shape) depicts a large spud reclining on a couch in front of a TV set. It was designed by underground cartoonist and illustrator, Bob Armstrong, one of the nine Couch Potato elders. The organization (now defunct) included both "Couch Potatoes" and "Tater Tots" (the younger members). The children were encouraged to watch as much TV as possible stressing historical programming like DAVY CROCKETT, YANCY DERRINGER and THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF WYATT EARP. Watching shows such as SESAME STREET or THE ELECTRIC COMPANY was a violation of one of their ten commandments: "Thou shalt not watch anything educational or British." 

The group's unofficial membership is calculated to be in the millions. To join, individuals needed to state why they deserved to be a couch potato and list their five all-time favorite television shows. Their publications included Tubers Voice (written during commercials); Dr. Spudd's Etiquette For The Couch Potato (Pamphlet); The Official Couch Potato Handbook; and A Guide To Prolonged Viewing. The game show COUCH POTATOES/SYN/1989 hosted by Marc Summers teamed three players each to compete for $5000 by answering TV trivia questions. TRIVIA NOTE: In the late 1980's in Massachusetts, another group came into existence called the Potato Anti-Defamation League. It was formed in response to the negative association with prolonged TV viewing.

Watch a Couch Potato Doll video ad from Coleco.

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Fighting Back: Saving the Potato's Image

 

Potato Anti-Defamation League button

A group in Massachusetts in the late 80's organized The Potato Anti-Defamation League as the potato's response to the negative association with prolonged tv viewing.

UK Farmers want "couch potato" removed from the dictionary because they believe the expression is damaging the vegetable's image.

A campaign promoting the use instead of "couch slouch" is being led by the British Potato Council, representing 4,000 growers and processors. The council argues that potatoes are "inherently healthy". Protests are due on Monday outside dictionary publisher Oxford University Press and in Parliament Square, London. "We are trying to get rid of the image that potatoes are bad for you," said council head of marketing Kathryn Race. "Of course it is not the Oxford English Dictionary's fault but we want to use another term than 'couch potato' because potatoes are inherently healthy." The campaign is backed by dieticians who say the vegetable is low in fat and high in vitamin C, the council says.
--Read the full BBC report here.

 

 

"Today The Grandpa Dug Potatoes"
by Opal Whitely

Today the grandpa dug potatoes in the field.
I followed along after.
I picked them up and piled them in piles.
Some of them were very plump.
And all the time I was picking up potatoes
I did have conversations with them.
To some potatoes I did tell about
my hospital in the near woods
and all the little folk in it and how much prayers and songs
and mentholatum helps them to have well feels.

To other potatoes I did talk about my friends----
how the crow, Lars Porsena
does have a fondness for collecting things,
how Aphrodite, the mother pig, has a fondness
for chocolate creams,
how my dear pig, Peter Paul Rubens, wears a 
little bell coming to my cathedral service.

Potatoes are very interesting folks, 
I think they must see a lot
of what is going on in the earth.
They have so many eyes.
Too, I did have thinks
of all their growing days
there in the ground,
and all the things they did hear.

And after, I did count the eyes
that every potato did have,
and their numbers were in blessings.

I have thinks these potatoes growing here
did have knowings of star songs.
I have kept watch in the field at night
and I have seen the stars
look kindness down upon them.
And I have walked between the rows of potatoes
and I have watched
the star gleams on their leaves.

 

---Adapted by Jane Boulton from six year-old Opal's diary,
kept at the turn of the century..
Published in Spud Songs: An Anthology of Potato Poems
Edited by Gloria Vando and Robert Stewart

Potato Child

The Potato Child & Others By Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury

The Vice-President and The "Potatoe" Kid

Throughout his time as US Vice President, Dan Quayle was widely ridiculed in the media and by many in the general public, in both the USA and overseas, as an intellectual lightweight. One reason was that he sometimes made confused or garbled statements, although this tendency led to his being "credited" with apocryphal quotations. His most famous blunder was when he corrected student William Figueroa's correct spelling of "potato" as "potatoe" at an elementary school spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey, on June 15, 1992. Quayle was said to have been relying on a spelling-bee card on which the word had been misspelled by the teacher.

The story became international news; Figueroa was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman and was asked to lead the pledge of allegiance at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

The event became a lasting part of Quayle's reputation. It was widely lambasted by comedians and commentators as a demonstration of his apparent stupidity.

Quayle received the satirical Ig Nobel Prize for "demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science education" in 1991. Other critics facetiously remarked that he was a good reason for even Bush's critics to pray for his health (Quayle as President "is just a heartbeat away...") and that he was the only Vice President to make a President "impeachment-proof." The misspelling incident remains a source of ridicule of Quayle.---Wikipedia

 

Everything2 has the full account, including what happened to William Fiqueroa, the Potatoe Kid.

"The date was June 15, 1992. It was campaign season. President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle were losing ground in the polls, and on this Monday morning Quayle was scheduled for a few campaign stops. After a 45-minute speech in Manhattan on the failure of Democratic policies in New York, it was time to head down to the Munoz Rivera School in Trenton, New Jersey, where the vapid veep was scheduled to sit in on the "Weed and Seed" anti-drug program, followed by a staged spelling bee.

Enter spelling bee participant William Figueroa, a chubby Puerto Rican 12-year-old from South Trenton whose unintentional stint in the political sphere would soon become the subject of many a comic routine. Figueroa stood at the chalkboard. The word was given: Potato. He printed it out in chalk: P-O-T-A-T-O.

"You're close," Quayle said, "but you left a little something off. The e on the end."

Young William was pretty sure he'd gotten the word right, but since this was the Vice President talking, he added the "e" anyway and sat down as scant applause came from the onlookers. When the event wrapped up, a reporter approached him, clutching a dictionary. He asked, "Did you know that you spelled potato right?"

The rest is pure gold. At a press conference held afterward, a reporter (perhaps the same one as before) was called on by Quayle for a question. The inevitable question came, "How do you spell potato?" Quayle (according to his 1994 memoir, Standing Firm) "...gave him a puzzled look, and then the press started laughing. It wasn't until that moment that (Quayle) realized anything was wrong." Apparently, none of Quayle's staff had informed him of his gaffe.

Word of Quayle's "Spud Problem" spread quickly, and William Figueroa enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame. Local paper The Trentonian carried a quote from Figueroa the following day saying the spelling bee "showed the rumors about the vice president are true -- that he's an idiot" (Figueroa now claims that he was misquoted). David Letterman got the kid's number from the newspaper and invited him onto his show. While on national TV, Figueroa refused to call the Vice President an idiot (Trenton mayor Doug Palmer had apparently warned his parents that "Weed and Seed" funding could be slashed if William angered Dan Quayle). He did say this, however: "I know he's not an idiot, but he needs to study more. Do you have to go to college to be Vice President?"

"Potatogate" went beyond late-night punchlines. It was the perfect opportunity for politicians to laugh and point. Bill Clinton and Al Gore turned that hay into political gold, and even flew Figueroa in to the Democratic National Convention to deliver the Pledge of Allegiance. He became known as The Potato Kid throughout the United States. In his grandparents' home country of Puerto Rico, he was known as "El rey de la papa" (The Potato King). He marched in Trenton's Puerto Rican Day Parade.

What is William Figueroa doing these days? In August of 2004, New York Times reporter Mark Fass caught up with him to ask a few questions. It turns out that the boy who would be king was a high-school dropout with a child of his own by the age of 16. By 24, he'd had 3 kids and was working at Wal-Mart."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content copyright The Potato Museum

POTATO TRIBUTES in Music compiled by Jeffrey Allen Price

The following is an attempt to compile a comprehensive list of POTATO tributes in music. If you know of others or can provide some POTATO samples please email The Potato Museum.