It was 1967, The Summer of Love, when my younger brother and I were spirited away by gypsies to spend the summer more than a thousand miles away from home. I would be heading into 10th grade that fall, at Ventura High School, if I made it back home.Growing up in San Diego, my siblings and I had three sets of grandparents. My dad’s parents had divorced and each remarried before I was born, giving us two sets on my dad’s side.
Papa and Marion, my dad’s father and stepmother, lived 3 hours north of us in Ventura. That was close enough for frequent visits, and we always enjoyed them. I inherited Papa’s dry sense of humor, as well as the talent to tell a whopper while keeping a straight face. Marion loved music, and had a huge collection of records. Papa and Marion loved to travel, and visit friends and family all over the country, and we spent hours watching home movies of their travels.
We lived just a couple miles from Mamaw and Pampaw, my dad’s mother and stepfather, in San Diego’s Clairemont Mesa suburb. Because we lived so close, we got to see them often, either at our house or theirs. And we kids would sometimes spend weekends with them.
‘Mamaw’ was my older sister’s pronunciation of ‘grandma’ when she was just learning to talk. It stuck, and by the time I was old enough to talk, and I said ‘Grandma’, I was quickly corrected. It was ‘Mamaw!’
My dad never liked his step-father. He blamed him, rightfully, for the divorce of his parents. Daddy lived with his dad, and he felt like his mother abandoned him. I think he always resented her, too. We never knew any of that, and we were never exposed to any animosity. As far as we knew, we were one big happy family, and we enjoyed all the benefits of having three sets of grandparents.
During summer vacation, while Pampaw worked, Mamaw would take us kids on trips to places like Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, The Hollywood Wax Museum, Marineland of the Pacific (before Seaworld), the San Diego Zoo, county fairs, and our first train ride. We had so many great adventures we never would have gotten to experience otherwise. She had the means to do it, and it took a lot of pressure off my mom, who was always a bit frail health-wise.
We spent many weekends with them, and sometimes several weeks at a time during summer vacations. Mamaw kept many exotic birds in outdoor aviaries, and guinea pigs ran loose in the backyard. She always had projects and fun things for us to do.
It was my mom’s folks, however, who were my favorite grandparents. We didn’t get to see them very often, as they traveled a lot for their work, but I always got a very special feeling when they came to visit.
Granny and Granddad were fruit gypsies, migrant workers who traveled state to state following the crop harvests. In those days, they spent the winter in southern California, harvesting the citrus crops, avocados, and other assorted vegetables that grew in the irrigated Imperial Valley desert near the Salton Sea. In the spring and summer, they traveled north to Washington and Oregon for the harvest of apples and cherries, and then to Northern California for peaches.
During their travels, they would pop in for a visit a couple times a year and stay with us for a few days or a couple weeks.Granddad was a bit of a kid at heart, and he was a tinkerer. He was always adjusting something or other, and he worked on the car all the time, whether it needed it or not.
He also loved to scrounge through junk yards in search of ‘useful’ items, so when they came to visit he would always bring us cool things he found, like toys, pocket knives, even a gas mask one time. It was a great thrill when he took us to junk yards, so we could discover our own treasures. It seemed like he instinctively knew the location of the local junk yards wherever we traveled.
Granny was a great cook, and she loved to bake. I learned many of my cooking skills from her.
They were both smokers, and Granddad always rolled his own. Even though smoking always disgusted me, I learned how to roll a cigarette. We rolled by hand, and he also showed me how to use a couple different rolling machines. To this day, I can roll with the best of them, and I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. They disgusted me then, and they still disgust me. But we were doing something together.
Granny and Granddad were the least able to spend money on us kids. They led simple lives, and earned just enough money to get by. But they were special people, and I loved their visits the most. I absorbed a lot of wisdom from them, especially Granny. Granddad had a lot of talents and knowledge, and he made up the craziest stories, but Granny was very wise.
Granddad was a skilled carpenter, and was quite able to make a living at it. He could easily have supported them both. However, according to my dad, he hated the thought of working all day while Granny ‘sat home and did nothing.’ Following the fruit harvest was his way of putting her to work.
Looking back, Granddad couldn’t sit still for very long. I think he just liked to move around. But they always seemed happy, healthy, content…and tanned.
Whenever I was doing or saying something considered objectionable, my frustrated granny would say, “The very idy!” Of course it was ‘the very idea’, but she made it rhyme with ‘tidy.’
To this day, I can hear her voice saying it. I guess I heard it a lot.I was in 6th grade when our family moved to Ventura, where Papa and Marion lived. My dad was a union carpenter, and apparently there were more employment opportunities in Ventura at the time. It was also a step closer to Oregon, where he had hoped to raise us kids. (By the time they finally made it to Oregon, my sister and I had already moved out on our own. Sherry was married, and I had a job and a girlfriend.)
In 1967, when my younger brother and I were old enough to get work permits, it was decided that he and I would travel to Oregon on summer vacation to pick cherries with Granny and Granddad. I don’t know how it came to be, or whose idea it was, but I was very excited to go. It sounded like a great adventure. And we would be making money!
The summer before that, Steve and I had stayed with them in Stockton, California. They were managing some rental cabins for the owners, who were away for a couple months. We both really enjoyed our time there, but this year would be a working vacation.
Normally, Granny and Granddad’s beige, 1949 Ford sedan was packed to the gills with all their belongings, mostly clothes, blankets and kitchen items. The back seat was always full, with an old bedspread neatly stretched over the pile. Somehow, they condensed their stuff for the trip, cleared out the back seat, and made room for Steve, me, and all our stuff.
It was a long drive, 1000 miles, and it was the farthest we had ever been away from home. We enjoyed the sights along the way. Interstate 5 was not yet completed through a long stretch in central California, so we went through many small towns that the freeway would eventually bypass. Granny would frequently tell us about the places we traveled through— interesting facts, history, personal experiences. I learned a lot on that trip.
We drove through the night, and finally arrived at our destination: Independence, Oregon.
The great Willamette Valley is Oregon’s agricultural center, and the area around Independence was home to hundreds of fruit orchards. My grandparents had been coming here for many years, so they knew many of the local growers.
Granny and Granddad always stayed in cabins on their travels. They were like motels, but intended for longer stays, much like the units they had managed the summer before in Stockton. Cedar Court was right in town and consisted of a group of about 12 separate pale green cabins, arranged in a loose semicircle around a big dirt parking area. In the center of that was a massive cedar tree. That tree was probably a seedling when the cabins were built.
Our cabin had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. It was roomy enough, and comfortable. The only bad thing: it had no shower. I hated sitting in my own dirty water in a bathtub. But I dealt with it. I still don’t like baths.
We spent the first day settling in, getting groceries and other supplies, and the next morning, we headed out to the orchards to talk with the foremen. Steve and I explored the orchard a bit while the adults did business, and the following day, we went to work: my first job.
It didn’t take long to learn how to pick cherries, and how to carry and set up the ladder. We were up and running very quickly, and by the end of the first day, we were picking fairly independently, moving at our own respectable pace.
There were other crews out picking, mostly migrants, like us. We met other pickers, and became part of the crew. I really enjoyed being out there.
I can still smell the cherries and the leaves. I can still see the crates, slowly filling up with cherries. I can still hear the rattle of the tall, 3-legged ladders we used.
Those ladders were very wide at the base on the climbing side. On the tree side, it had only one leg, which allowed it to go between branches and get the picker closer to the fruit. The wide base and three legs made it very stable on uneven ground. There were several sizes of ladders, from about 6 feet tall to maybe 12 feet. I learned how to move and set them up by myself.
One day, I had a mishap with one of those ladders. After filling my bucket, I started down the ladder, facing away from the ladder, which is a no-no for ladders as a rule. It gives you nothing to grab if you slip. As I started down, I stepped on a cherry that had landed on a rung. My shoe rolled on the cherry seed, off the rung, and I went to the ground, my feet bouncing off every rung on the way down. I was unharmed, but quite shaken, and very careful from then on.
We started the summer picking Royal Ann cherries. The Royal Ann variety was born right there in the Willamette Valley. It was descended from a group of Napoleon Cherry trees brought from Iowa in the mid 1800s by a couple of brothers who wanted to start an orchard. Those brothers also developed the Bing variety of cherry.
Royal Anns are fairly large, but not very red at harvest, although the ripest, reddest ones were quite tasty. These cherries had to be picked with the stems on, because they would be used to make Maraschino Cherries. They would eventually be bleached, and then dyed the characteristic red or green colors.
We each wore a harness with a metal bucket that hung in front. We could pick with both hands, then easily dump the cherries into a crate. A few leaves were inevitable, we just made sure to remove any that were visible from the top of the filled crate. The crates held about 30 pounds of cherries, and we got a dollar for every crate we filled.
I could fill 7 to 10 crates a day, depending on how dense the cherries grew. Steve did somewhat less. He was only a year younger, but he was much less motivated. We kept busy, never complained, and I think we impressed our grandparents with how hard we worked.
I had a portable transistor radio, and I listened to the local top 40 radio station all day! It was the Summer of Love, and it was an amazing year for music! Even today, hearing certain songs takes me right back to the cherry trees.
At lunchtime, we would find some shade, and dig into the lunches we had each prepared for ourselves. I always had a sandwich with just bread and Land-O-Frost lunchmeat. It came in several varieties: ham; chicken; corned beef; and my favorite, roast beef. My sandwich was dry, because I didn’t like mayonnaise at the time. A couple cookies and a can of generic cola or root beer completed the meal. Then it was back to work.
Throughout the day, a farmhand would drive by on a tractor pulling a small, flat trailer. He would load our filled crates, and issue us a ticket for each crate. On payday, we would turn in our tickets for cash.
On the drive back to our cabin, cash in hand, Steve and I would mentally edit the shopping lists we kept in our heads, and fantasize about all we could buy with our riches.
It was a very small town, but there were several businesses, including a small variety store and a hardware store where we could spend our money. We did buy a couple things, but we were both pretty thrifty. I remember that I bought a Swiss Army-style knife. It was huge, and had every tool imaginable, including a full-size fork and spoon. It came with a leather belt pouch. It was so cool. The only thing I bought that I still have was from a small bookstore in town. It was a field guide to reptiles and amphibians. I still have it, and I still use it.
There wasn’t much to do when we weren’t working. There was no television in the room, and I remember that being a terrible hardship.
The railroad went through town, and the tracks were right behind our cabins. For a thrill, Steve and I put coins on the tracks to have them flattened by the passing trains. I think that’s why TV was invented in the first place.
Once the Royal Anns were harvested, we picked a few Bings. Those are the deep red cherries you buy to eat fresh. When those were finished, we moved on to the pie cherries.
Pie cherries are small, bright red, quite juicy, but very tart. There would be no snacking on these. We could pick pie cherries without stems, which made picking easy. We could put our fingers through a group of stems and just pull a bunch of cherries off their stems and into our bucket in one move. We could get both hands going like this, and we called it ‘milking.’
But pie cherries were much smaller, really messy and sticky, and it took twice as long to fill a crate. My income suffered!
After a few weeks, the cherry harvest was about over, so we headed down to the little town of Live Oak in Northern California. It was the middle of summer, and very hot and humid. We were there for the peach harvest.
Live Oak is a small town about 50 miles north of Sacramento. We again moved into a small cabin, and this time there were other kids our age in the neighboring units. We made some friends there.
There were two other boys about our age, and one very attractive girl we hung out with when we weren’t working. Her father chased us boys off more than once, saying we followed his daughter around like dogs in heat. She was very sweet, and although it was on my mind, there was no hanky-panky. But somehow, my thoughts were validated by her dad’s suggestion.Unlike our cabins in Oregon, which were right in town, these cabins bordered the orchards out in the boonies. We could walk to work. And also unlike Independence, there were no stores or other places to go within walking distance on our time off, so it was nice to find friends to hang with.
Picking peaches was a bit of a different process from the cherry harvest. Our chest-mounted cherry-picking bucket was replaced by a canvas bag. The bottom was open, and folded up and tied to hold the fruit. The peaches we picked were then dumped from our bags into bins.
Instead of the 30-lb cherry crates, we were filling huge bins with peaches. They measured over 3 feet square and were about two and a half feet deep. I went from filling 10 crates a day to filling only one bin all day. It was very discouraging watching that same bin all day, slowly filling up.
Our harvest rate was also slowed by the size requirements. We couldn’t just pick all the peaches that were on the tree. They had to be over a certain size, so we each carried a plastic sizing ring. If the peach fit through the ring, it was too small to pick.
Eventually we were able to judge the sizes fairly accurately without measuring, but it was still slow.
Peaches bruise easily with rough handling, so we were further slowed by the need to handle each one delicately. We had to carefully place each one in the bag, then carefully empty the bag into the bin.
The slower harvest rate was discouraging, but the worst part was the intense summertime heat of California’s Central Valley. Combined with the peach fuzz sticking to our sweaty bodies, it was miserable. I think we quit by 2pm most days because of the heat.
As I recall, the one bin I could fill in that time earned me $4. That’s about half of what I had been making, and it was not nearly as enjoyable. I liked picking cherries. I did not like picking peaches.
One afternoon, after we finished picking for the day, Steve and I saw a little red bi-plane spraying the orchard across the road. We thought it would be a good idea to go into the orchard to get up close to the plane as it flew over. We were right…and wrong.
It was a thrill to have that plane fly so close, directly overhead. We had never been that close to an airplane. What was not a thrill, however, was the dusting of sulfur we received from that plane. My eyes have never burned so badly. They were red and puffy for days! We also received a proper scolding from Granny: “The very idy!”
The harvest eventually ended—or we had simply had all we could take—and soon enough we were back home in Ventura enjoying the rest of the summer with our friends. And the best part was, I had a couple hundred dollars to spend on anything I wanted.
Steve and I returned to Oregon the next summer with Granny and Granddad to pick cherries again. The previous summer, we only had to pay for our own extra stuff, candy and snacks…the non-essential stuff. This summer, we had to partly pay our own way. We each paid a little bit for food and rent, so we weren’t able to save as much money. It was a good economics lesson though.
We didn’t make it to California for the peach harvest that summer. I was not sad about that. The heat, sweat, and peach fuzz was still fresh in my memory.
At the end of the cherry harvest, my parents, sister and other brother traveled up from Ventura in a camper to get Steve and me for a family sightseeing and camping trip up to Seattle.
That was our last trip picking cherries. My Granny passed away the following year, and I will always cherish the quality time we had travelling as gypsies with my favorite grandparents.
Scott Wright © 2017