So oddly enough i found the below in my folder of docs on my computer. My grandma must of written this sometime while she was visiting. So i thought i would post it to remember her and the life she lived...so sweet at the end...
Written by Mickey Beck
"I was thinking today of the area in which I was raised, the San Joaquin Valley. My grandparents settled there in the very small town of Hanford, California. Strictly an agricultural area.
The town had one high school, one theatre. The weather was, and is, very hot in the summer, 100 degrees, and above on ocassions. It is cold in the winter, lows of 28 degrees, foggy, and raimy at times. We did not have a car, but the bad thing about having a car in the foggy season, and driving in it was there weren’t any lines down the middle of the streets. If you were on a country road you couldn’t tell if you were still on the road or not. One time after I was married, my husband had a l934 Ford convertible, I had to get out on the running board, and direct him so he would know if he was still on the road.
Being the foodbasket of the world, if the weather wasn’t hot the fruit wouldn’t open. Also in the winter if we had hail after the blossoms set on the trees the fruit was inedible because the hail made pock marks in the fruit even if it was just in the blossom stage.
There wasn’t any air conditioning and many of the houses had screen porches so that we could sit out there in the hope that a breeze of some kind would come up to temper the summer heat. There were also a lot bugs, gnats, flies and mosquitos. I remember out at my stepfather’s ranch trying to play when they were butchering the hogs in order to make linquesa, there were so many flies you couldn’t sit any place and be comfortable. The mosquito bites were many because we had no way of getting away from the mosquitos. We got used to persperation running down our faces and our clothing sticking to our bodies. They have mosquito control in the valley now, but you also have the side effects of the pesticides.
I love figs, but have you ever harvested any? The leaves are sticky and the juice from the figs even worse. Its gets all over you and you itch all over. You have to climb up into the trees to get the figs because if they are allowed to drop to the ground they mash. Add to that the flies, mosquitos, and hot weather and you find you do not have a very pleasant day picking figs. But the figs are delicious there, and very, very sweet. My brother had a fig tree, and I’m sure it was in memory of the hours he and I spent picking figs at the ranch.
One thing I did growing up was stand on a box and cut apricots with my grandmother. This is something she did for extra money because there were no jobs, and money was hard to come by. We went to the farmers property where the apricots were grown . They gave us lugs of apricots, which we cut and laid out on trays to go to the processors to be dried. The pay for a lug as I recall was 10 cents a lug. I thought I worked hard, but I know I was allowed to rest if I got tired. Apricots are ripe in the summer time, so there was no school.
Of course there were happy times when we were given a penney to go to the store for a candy . When the ice man came by on his truck, and just accidentally dropped ice so we could get ice to suck on. Occasionally a house would be having a new tar roof, and we would get some and chew it. When I went to high school we used to go to one of the trees near our school and dig up the roots, which were licorice roots and made good chewing.
There were concerts in the downtown park next to the County Courthouse. It would be in the early evening in the summer and grandma would take blankets to put on the ground, and a picnic lunch to eat while we listened to the music. Of course we children didn’t listen much. We would play games, hide and seek, mostly. The teen agers would find places where they could hang out and neck.
The good thing about those days was that no one was afraid to be out on the streets after dark. Everyone felt safe, secure and loved. The important thing in any household is to feel loved. If you have that you are rich."
The town had one high school, one theatre. The weather was, and is, very hot in the summer, 100 degrees, and above on ocassions. It is cold in the winter, lows of 28 degrees, foggy, and raimy at times. We did not have a car, but the bad thing about having a car in the foggy season, and driving in it was there weren’t any lines down the middle of the streets. If you were on a country road you couldn’t tell if you were still on the road or not. One time after I was married, my husband had a l934 Ford convertible, I had to get out on the running board, and direct him so he would know if he was still on the road.
Being the foodbasket of the world, if the weather wasn’t hot the fruit wouldn’t open. Also in the winter if we had hail after the blossoms set on the trees the fruit was inedible because the hail made pock marks in the fruit even if it was just in the blossom stage.
There wasn’t any air conditioning and many of the houses had screen porches so that we could sit out there in the hope that a breeze of some kind would come up to temper the summer heat. There were also a lot bugs, gnats, flies and mosquitos. I remember out at my stepfather’s ranch trying to play when they were butchering the hogs in order to make linquesa, there were so many flies you couldn’t sit any place and be comfortable. The mosquito bites were many because we had no way of getting away from the mosquitos. We got used to persperation running down our faces and our clothing sticking to our bodies. They have mosquito control in the valley now, but you also have the side effects of the pesticides.
I love figs, but have you ever harvested any? The leaves are sticky and the juice from the figs even worse. Its gets all over you and you itch all over. You have to climb up into the trees to get the figs because if they are allowed to drop to the ground they mash. Add to that the flies, mosquitos, and hot weather and you find you do not have a very pleasant day picking figs. But the figs are delicious there, and very, very sweet. My brother had a fig tree, and I’m sure it was in memory of the hours he and I spent picking figs at the ranch.
One thing I did growing up was stand on a box and cut apricots with my grandmother. This is something she did for extra money because there were no jobs, and money was hard to come by. We went to the farmers property where the apricots were grown . They gave us lugs of apricots, which we cut and laid out on trays to go to the processors to be dried. The pay for a lug as I recall was 10 cents a lug. I thought I worked hard, but I know I was allowed to rest if I got tired. Apricots are ripe in the summer time, so there was no school.
Of course there were happy times when we were given a penney to go to the store for a candy . When the ice man came by on his truck, and just accidentally dropped ice so we could get ice to suck on. Occasionally a house would be having a new tar roof, and we would get some and chew it. When I went to high school we used to go to one of the trees near our school and dig up the roots, which were licorice roots and made good chewing.
There were concerts in the downtown park next to the County Courthouse. It would be in the early evening in the summer and grandma would take blankets to put on the ground, and a picnic lunch to eat while we listened to the music. Of course we children didn’t listen much. We would play games, hide and seek, mostly. The teen agers would find places where they could hang out and neck.
The good thing about those days was that no one was afraid to be out on the streets after dark. Everyone felt safe, secure and loved. The important thing in any household is to feel loved. If you have that you are rich."
