The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Lamenting the fruit stand's last stand

By Ingrid McCleary

I was sifting through the Sunnyvale Neighborhood Phone Book looking for Chuck's Garden Fresh Produce when it struck me--there are only five fruit stands left in all of Sunnyvale.

Five? In a city whose origins are steeped in agriculture? A city smack in the valley where eight million fruit and nut trees bloomed every spring in the early 1900s? How could this be?

Yes, I know--progress. But must progress be synonymous with concrete? Aren't we, as a nation, returning "to the earth"? Aren't we in the neck of the U-turn in our efforts to conserve, recycle and respect the land?

Lest you think me an alarmist, compare these five fruit stands to the number of computer stores in Sunnyvale. How many would you guess? My daughter said 12. My husband figured 50. I counted 299, but I might have missed a few dozen.

Now, I love my computer. I'm proud to live in Sunnyvale. Heck, even President Clinton checked us out, so we're definitely doing something right. But I can't help but think of all that fertile soil beneath our homes, our stores, our highways. Kind of like not teaching a child genius to read. Wasted potential.

For a while I had organic fruits and vegetables delivered to my door. Jan Murphy, a longtime Sunnyvale resident, introduced me to this service, saying it felt like Christmas finding the bushel on her front porch every two weeks. Not one to pass up on good feelings, I arranged for my own biweekly present and found that it also transported me to a simpler place and time. When milkmen whistled up your walk with clanging bottles. When newspaper boys bellowed out the daily headlines on street corners. When life looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.

But my "organic man" quit the business, and I decided to buy fruits and vegetables from my neighborhood fruit stand, where the goods were tastier than what was available at the major grocery chains. I kept this routine up for a few months, but then my "time-means-money" logic took over and I gradually began to frequent stores that carried everything under one roof. I'm resolved to return to Chuck's Produce because I want to support these last vestiges of country living.

Speaking of last vestiges and support, I'm also going to buy two of those $100 bricks that the OHPIE task force is offering to raise money for the interpretative exhibit its members are building at Orchard Heritage Park as a tribute to the agricultural history of this valley. (The exhibit model will be on display at the Cupertino Library during September.) The bricks, engraved with your own words (three lines, 15 characters per line), will line the Heritage Walkway. (Call Leslie Lawton at 749-9848 to order your own.)

Imagine 15 years from now when this 10-acre orchard may very well be the last orchard in Sunnyvale, when even the last five fruit stands may have given up the ghost. Imagine strolling over these bricks, reading names of people you knew, of bricks given in honor of longtime residents and in loving memory of family and friends. Imagine the sense of community that will surround you, knowing these names loved this valley back then--and love this valley enough now to become a permanent part of the land.

I look forward to the day when my mother comes to visit. We'll stroll to Chuck's Produce, buy some fruit, then head over to Orchard Heritage Park, where she'll come across the brick dedicated to her and my father, thanking them for bringing us here from Holland so long ago.

I can already envision my first grandchild running her chubby forefinger over the etchings of the "McCleary Brick." These may not be the roots of fruit and nut trees, but they're roots that'll stand a long time.

Ingrid McCleary is a Sunnyvale resident and a columnist for The Sun.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, August 27, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.