Concerned that your candidate didn't win today's election?

Worried that economic hard times may be right around the corner?

For anyone who's fearful about America's financial future or the political fallout from the 2008 presidential race, Art Oakes has one word for you: Turnips.

Oakes, a Keystone resident with a back-to-the-land philosophy of economic survival, planted four 40-foot rows of turnips as a "test plot" in his backyard. He wanted to test his theory that the easy-to-grow root crop could, if necessary, save him and others from economic doom and gloom as efficiently as it saved his old boss and mentor from starvation in a World War II German prisoner of war camp.

Oakes even has a complicated political theory involving the French Revolution, the Irish potato famine and Marie Antoinette's famous line, "Let them eat cake," in which he suggests the high-minded ideals of the U.S. Constitution may owe their existence to the lowly turnip. "It's a stretch," he admits with a smile.

But he is serious about hard times, politics and turnips.

Oakes met his turnip mentor, George Vender, in 1955 when he went to work for him in the electro-plating industry in California. Vender, a navigator on a bomber crew, spent two years in Stalag 17, the POW camp made famous in a 1953 movie by the same name. "For two years, he ate mostly turnips," Oakes said of his hero, who used to tell him stories of surviving on little besides turnips and bread. "George planted turnip seeds in my mind. So I planted a test plot of turnips expressly for hard times."

Turnips are a nutritional powerhouse that pack a reasonably well-rounded diet into their green leafy tops and their tuberous roots. Just one cup of boiled turnips and turnip greens provides half of the Vitamin C, 16 percent of the iron, 21 percent of the calcium, 10 percent of the protein and a whopping 280 percent of the Vitamin A that a person needs each day, as well as many other important nutrients. If you had to eat one food for two years, turnips would be a good choice, if not an entirely palatable one, Oakes said.

Oakes admits he'd question how badly he wanted to survive after a diet of nothing but turnips, but he does encourage people to think about how they would feed themselves if they had to.

"Even if you're not much of a gardener, you can probably grow turnips," he said, showing off his enormous crop that grew rapidly in poor soil and high altitude and is still withstanding freezing temperatures.

"I don't have to eat them," Oakes says of his turnips, but he worries about high grocery costs for people struggling with unemployment or shrinking household budgets. "I see these young moms wheeling out carts of groceries that cost $150 and I wonder," he said. "My message to the general public is, you can get by on very little if you have to. I want to give people hope that they can eat something, instead of nothing."

Oakes, a John McCain supporter, planted his turnips before the stock market plunged to historic lows and wiped out trillions of dollars worth of investor wealth. Now, he worries that a Barack Obama victory at the polls today would be a further threat to the frugality he embraces and the conservative approach to life and politics that he encourages.

"I don't think it's going to be pretty," he said of an Obama victory that some polls forecast.

As a result, he predicts he'll plant turnips again next year. "Yeah, I'll probably be expanding my garden a bit next year," he said.

Oakes will be at his post as a poll watcher in Keystone today and the results will determine whether he goes to "a wake or a party" tonight, he said.

But whether he's celebrating victory or wallowing in defeat, Oakes will have plenty of turnips to eat while he does.

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com