 |
|
|
|
Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
The Rubinos (Joseph, Leo, Joe and Sam) were the founders of Valley View Packing.
Valley of Heart's Delight
By Cookie Curci-Wright
Upon viewing our valley for the first time in 1868, naturalist John Muir captured the moment in these words: "It was bloom time of the year. ... The landscapes of the Santa Clara Valley were fairly drenched with sunshine, all the air was quivering with the songs of the meadowlarks, and the hills were so covered with flowers that they seemed to be painted."
By the turn of the century, our valley's fertile orchards dominated the landscape. The snow-white blossoms of plum and cherry trees covered the valley, a valley that was soon to be revered as the garden capital of the world.
It was around this time that Henry Willard Coe purchased 150 acres in Willow Glen, then known as "The Willows." He developed the process of sulfuring dried fruit and revolutionized the local fruit industry.
In the years that followed, the rich fruit orchards of Willow Glen produced bountiful crops, which created employment for many local residents. Harold Mitchell's cherry-packing plant on Willow Street was one of many fruit-packing companies to offer seasonal employment. Mitchell's prominent packing plant supplied assorted boxes of fresh cherries to markets and other retailers across the country.
As a teen in the early 1930s, my mom was among the local workers employed at Mitchell's cherry-packing company. She fondly recalls her early morning walks to work and how she would pass by the Abate Dairy on Lincoln Avenue's north side and see the dairy's contented cows grazing in the pasture.
She recalls the many "dry lots" she saw along her route and the pungent aroma of drying fruit that filled the air around them. ("Dry lots" was a name given to vacant lots where local ranchers took their fruit to be spread out in shallow wooden trays and allowed to dry in the sun.)
Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
Smudge pots, which protected blossoms from frost, were once a common sight in Willow Glen orchards.
In those days, it wasn't unusual for Willow Glen residents to wake up in the morning to find everything outside covered with a thick layer of black soot from the ranchers' smudge pots. Smudge pots, for those too young to remember, were small kettles of burning oil that produced a thick layer of warm, black smoke. Ranchers used them in their orchards to protect the delicate fruit trees from frost. Any housewife who had left her wash on the line the night before would wake to find it covered in soot. Even our noses were full of this black smoke. Smudge pots, like the plentiful orchards they protected, began to disappear after the 1940s.
Ask any Willow Glen resident who lived here when the community abounded with cherry, apricot and prune blossoms and they will tell you, "It was the most beautiful place in the world." It's a description I've heard again and again. Especially when long-time valley residents like myself get together and reminisce about our prune-picking days.
It comes over us every summer, like a late spring fever, that old nostalgia for the hustle and bustle of a prune ranch during picking season, the clang of a prune bucket being tugged along the base of an orchard tree and the feel of dirt clods crumbling under our knees. We miss that northern summer wind that used to carry the aroma of dehydrating prunes from the nearby Valley View packing house on old Hillsdale Road; we miss the spring irrigation and watching the orchards fill with zigzagging canals of water and how a relentless rhythm took hold of the ranch at that special time of year as each family member carried out an assigned task.
Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
Cookie Curci-Wright (third from left), shown here picking prunes on her grandfather's ranch in 1951, still gets nostalgic for the Glen's orchard days.
Prune picking, for those of us who experienced it, is a unique and individual memory. For some, it was a hated chore; for others, just a summer job. To our early founders it was a way of life, a means to sustain their families. To me, a third-generation prune picker, picking prunes was an anticipated family event and one that was more fun than work. Gathering those little purple plums off the ground could be monotonous work, however, and those of us blessed with big hands could get the job done in half the time--25 cents a bucket, four buckets to a box.
By the 1920s, the valley's fruit industry was known around the country for its incredible bounty. Canning companies like Del Monte, Sunsweet, Mayfair and Valley View Packing transformed the fruit industry into a national commodity. Local ranchers, such as the Peruccis, Dinapolis, Battaglias and Rubinos, helped this area to earn its nickname, "Valley of Heart's Delight."
Life was tough for early Willow Glen residents like my grandparents, but it was uniquely good, too. Families didn't have much in material assets, but they were rich in the things that mattered. When this generation of kids weren't working for papa on the ranch or going to school, they were sharing social gatherings, family dinners, picnics in Alum Rock park, card games and chasing behind the horse-drawn water wagon as it sprinkled water on Willow Glen's dirt roads. They also shared a deep love and respect for their immigrant parents: fathers who worked two jobs and sharecropped the local land, and mothers who spent long hours on the cannery lines, earning 5 cents a bucket cutting 'cots and tomatoes so their kids could have a better life.
It's a familiar story to third generationers like myself, who grew up with the knowledge of how our grandparents came here from the Old World, planted fruit trees and worked the land. When economic times were tough, local agriculture supplied them with the work they needed to survive. As in many families, my parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents all worked full-time jobs on the Del Monte cannery lines in Willow Glen.
These canneries, packing plants and early community ranchers, like our immigrant grandparents, worked in separate ways to achieve together what we all enjoy today--an area rich in family traditions and agricultural history.
|
|
|
|
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
