By Harold E. Grice

Once, long ago, in time gone by, several boatloads ago at least, there appeared in Castroville a bunch of Italians. Of the men, there was Arturo (the oldest and responsible for them all), Carlo, Luigi, Giuseppi, Ralph, etc., and they brought some women too.

They were not fitting in well or having too good a time because, well, it wasn’t the old country and here people spoke funny, in two languages.

Arturo, as the oldest, felt responsible for this and said to himself, “I feel so bad, I think I will kill myself. These thistles all over the place nobody will eat, they must be bad, and if I eat them, they will kill me.” So he swallowed down a bunch of the thistles. The thistles got all stuck up and he choked, gagged, and sure enough, died.

When they examined him, Carlo saw Arturo’s insides looked like there had been a cat fight because his throat and stomach were badly mauled. This was not an honorable way for an Italian man to die, which made Carlo feel so bad he wanted to die too.

Carlo decided to kill himself the same way, but Carlo was not one for pain, and since eating the whole prickly thistle would hurt too much, he would just eat the soft-looking part. Better yet, he would boil it to make it a soft death. He wouldn’t have to suffer through all that pain.

So that is what he did. Carlo was surprised, as, to his amazement, he found, “These are really good! What a way to die!”

Well, Carlo not only didn’t die, he discovered the cooked thistles were really good, especially with a little olive oil and garlic on them. So Carlo fixed up a bunch and took them to his friends. “Here,” he said, “these are good, try them.”

His friends knew about Arturo dying, so they said, “We’re not going to eat those. You’re crazy, why don’t you go kill yourself.”

Since his friends would not eat what he had fixed, Carlo decided to sell them if he could.

He did sell them. He practiced how to cook them and the thistles became popular. Carlo wanted to name them something besides “thistle” so, in honor of his friend, he named them “Arturo-he-choked.”

But this name is long forgotten.

Selling these thistles became a thriving business and, by and by, Castroville became synonymous with Art-he-choke.

Interestingly enough, a lot of people still retain the old belief that artichokes will kill you because we often hear, while the French-fried artichokes are frying, the following lament: “God, if I eat one more of these I’ll die!”

Oh, well!

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Harold E. Grice is a sixth-generation Californian and has spent most of his life within the Central California Region. While his background is in professional engineering, he has also been active in the arts. As a founding Board Member and later Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Alisal Center for the Fine Arts, he was instrumental in bringing the arts experience to an underprivileged high school. Harold wrote two plays while studying at the Western Stage in Salinas, California. More recently, he participated in the Thunderbird Writers Group at the Thunderbird Bookstore in Carmel, California. This group published two anthologies, which included a half dozen of his stories and poems.