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Main Street
Apricot orchard gone, but memories remain
By Mary Ann Cook
PASSAGES: While bulldozers and cement trucks creak and whir to create houses on Blossom Hill Road near Union Avenue, eradicating one of the last apricot orchards in town, reminiscences are set in motion. Though the orchard has been rotting away for the past few years, feelings about its demise run strong as the housing development takes shape.
One nearby resident, Betty Auchard, wrote a story about it. Every spring "the bare black trunks and branches of those squatty trees against an ocean of yellow mustard took my breath away," she begins.
Auchard showed the piece to the manager of All Tied Up, a needlework store south on Blossom Hill Road, across from the Fish Market Restaurant. Auchard teaches color theory for quilters at All Tied Up, as well as fabric painting and dying.
The store manager passed the Auchard piece on to a friend named Mary Jane Scott. Unknown to the manager, Scott had written her own reminiscence, this one a poem. Both women are widows and had turned their hand to writing as part of working through their grief.
The two have never met, but have spoken on the phone and found they have a lot in common. Scott's husband was a Presbyterian minister; Auchard and her husband, Denny (who had been dean of the school of education at San Jose State University), had helped establish a Presbyterian Church at Foxworthy and Union.
They wonder if anyone else out there has a special reminiscence of the orchard, since it was a favored spot for painters and photographers through the years, too.
Other Auchards were upset over the demolished orchard, too, and Betty's son Dave and his wife, Nola, spent an entire day salvaging chunks of wood from the termite-infested and razed orchard, with Nola tearfully reminded of her childhood. This pile was then stored at the edge of the Auchard driveway.
Gradually it's gotten smaller because Dave Auchard has been applying a turning lathe to the wood and creating fascinating bowls therefrom.
The creations contain all manner of crevices, cracks and holes, so are not suitable as containers.
Rather, "they are objects of art," as Auchard's story has it, "already filled to the brim with memories and can hold only these. ... Who would have ever guessed that such derelict looking stuff held such latent beauty?... as though ... its beauty had been condensed into the rot, just waiting to be brought back for another shot at glory."
P.S.: Another article Auchard wrote, "Driving Denny," will be included in Chocolate for a Woman's Soul II, to be published by Simon and Schuster in late 2000.
THEY DO WINDOWS: On the morning of Nov. 13, members of the Los Gatos Rotary Club will be out in force to administer a cleanup and burnishing to Los Gatos High School. They'll work alongside the Los Gatos High Interact Club and the administration, weeding, painting and washing.
The biggest project, they say, is steam-cleaning the steps. Also on the agenda are relandscaping, and painting and repairing the front monument sign. Windows will be washed and garbage cans painted. Beth Cilker Smith is the Rotarian in charge.
AT THE TAIT: A reception for the artists will be held Nov. 14 at Los Gatos Museum of Art and Natural History from 1 to 4 p.m. "Languages" will display the paintings of Betty O'Hare and the memory boxes of Kristin Herrera. The exhibit runs to Dec. 29.
O'Hare's work is described as fantasy landscapes; Herrera's boxes repose in glass cases and exude a contemporary feel, with humor lurking within.
OLDEN DAYS: Mary Foster interviewed nearly 100 longtime Los Gatans in the series she produced for the Forbes Museum and which airs on KCAT (now residing at Channel 15). Banker Bill Balch, now of the Meadows, was one recently spotted. These interviews about old-time Los Gatos and Los Gatans are an archival treasure, their value brought home even more poignantly since Mary Foster's death. They can also be viewed at the Forbes Museum.
BUDGET TRAVEL: Dan Eggerding has been an avid traveler ever since his college days, when he was the only engineering student at Valparaiso College in Indiana ever to apply to be an exchange student.
He attended Reutlingen Teachers College in Germany for a semester and toured Europe for eight months, keeping a journal. During that time he spent $1,000 beyond his schooling costs. And that includes $100 for a painting in Spain he couldn't resist.
Since then he has accrued 20-plus years of experience in travel and offers talks at bookstores and libraries on the subject. One will be given on Nov. 20 at the Campbell Library from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. A nugget from the Eggerding cache: "Pack half the clothes you think you'll need and bring twice the money."
BENEFIT: The Virtual Gallery hosted a benefit in October for San Jose Repertory Theatre's Red Ladder Theatre Company, a program for at-risk youths and adults. Guest artist was Peter Mailer Yates.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
