Fraters Libertas

Black Gold…Idaho Tea

Forbes magazine recently published their annual list of the 400 richest Americans. While perusing this list, I came across the following entry:

76. Simplot, John Richard and family, 94, $2.4 billion, Boise, Idaho, potatoes, microchips

I can see Ma and Pa Simplot about thirty years ago sitting around the kitchen table:

“Ma,” says John, “these here potatoes have done us right good in the past. But we needs ourselves something to do in this next comin’ twenty first century. I hears that the microchip is what them youngun’s is all worked up about. Hows abouts we grow ourselves a mess of ‘em?”

And the rest is history.