I asked Marco to write a little about Orem and orchards. Thanks, Marco ...When I was a kid, Orem was all about orchards. "It's that rocky Orem soil" people would say. "Perfect for fruit trees." We grew up picking fruit. Cherries especially, at both my Grandpas' orchards. We would get 5 cents a pound. Sweet cherries were better than pie cherries. We only got 3 cents for pie cherries, because you didn't have to pick them with the stems on, but you'd get all sticky.
It took a lot of cherries to fill a crate, 40 pounds a crate... $2 for 40 pounds. On a good day we would fill 3 or 4 crates in a day. The mexican workers my grandpas hired would pick 8 or 10 crates whole families out in the trees, busy, serious, non-stop. We weren't as motivated. We ate a lot of cherries. And threw a lot at each other. And daydreamed a lot. So $8 a day was a pretty good take for us.
Even people whose grandpas weren't trying to teach them the value of a good honest days work ("why, when I was a kid, I'd work all week for a quarter...!") by making them pick for cash, would still spend plenty of summer mornings on ladders picking fruit. Everybody worked at the welfare farm, and for us, that meant picking fruit. Pears and peaches mostly. One year, just before the Orem Mall was built, the owner of the land told our stake president that if he would water and pick the orchard, the stake could have the fruit. So we had two orchards to pick that year. And they held off the bulldozers until after the harvest.
Yes, the Orem Mall used to be all orchards. So did just about everyplace else in Orem. UVSC campus: former orchards. The University Parkway stripmalls: deceased Orchards. Walmart, ex-Orchards. The used car lots along State Street: nevermore Orchards. The WordPerfect campus: deleted Orchards. Our Arthurs Court neighborhood: obliterated Orchards. All the other Orem neighborhoods, schools, shops, and office parks built since 1975, all former, used-to-be Orchards. Of course, "Orchard" elementary school and "The Orchards" shopping center..... well, you know.
Even the stake welfare farms are gone now. Somebody finally got to the welfare committee at last and made them crunch the numbers, and proved that it would take 748 years of picking peaches to make the same profit as selling one building lot to Ivory Homes.
But when I was a kid, you couldn't miss the orchards in Orem, since they were everywhere. It was a green, leafy, town in the summer, and rows and rows of skeletal shadows in winter. And even in the suburban enclaves that had been carved here and there into the orchards, most people had a tree or two in their yard, and I think they actually picked them in those days. Some late winter mornings you'd really be reminded about the orchards, since in case of cold-snap that threatened the blossoms, all the farmers would light up these acrid "smudge-pots" that would belch thick black smoke that would hang low in the orchards and (supposedly) raise the temperature a few degrees, enough to save the crop. Of course, the smoke would blanket the valley, so it was probably also enough to cause us all to have early onset emphysema... but then in those days we also had Geneva Steel, so we had battle-toughened lungs, immune to pollution, and besides what's a few extra zillion parts per billion of particulates among friends! Since everybody's dad either worked at Geneva or in an orchard, nobody complained...
One winter, my grandpa decided I needed to be taught the value of a days work when it was freezing outside as well. He got Mr Cordner, who owned all the orchards north of 800 North (where the golf course and all those zillion dollar McMansions are now) to hire me to help prune and fertilize his pear crop. I turned out to be no good at pruning. But I spread tons and tons of (probably highly toxic) Geneva by-product granular fertilizer up and down his miles and miles of pear rows. A nice Mexican guy driving the tractor, and me freezing and scooping industrial-smelling steel mill fertilizer on the trailer, and dumping it along the rows.
My grandpas were part-time farmers. They had regular "winter jobs" too, besides being farmers -- one was a high school teacher, the other a lawyer. Mr Cordner was a counselor at the high school. My sixth grade teacher, Mr Crandall, also had an orchard. He and his brothers, I think. And, unlike my grandpas' orchards which are, saldly, long gone, Mr Crandall's orchard is still there. It's one of the very last orchards in Orem. And unbelievably, its right on Center Street. They probably get calls 5 times a day from hungry real estate developers who can't wait to bulldoze the last trees in Orem and pack in some lovely vinyl and stucco Ivory ticky-tackies, but thankfully they have so far resisted. Beautiful purple-red apples and bright green pears. It's a reminder of where, besides the grocery store, apples come from. It's a good think we still have a few of them around. And the Crandalls just planted some new trees last year, so maybe they'll be around a while longer. I hope so.
It took a lot of cherries to fill a crate, 40 pounds a crate... $2 for 40 pounds. On a good day we would fill 3 or 4 crates in a day. The mexican workers my grandpas hired would pick 8 or 10 crates whole families out in the trees, busy, serious, non-stop. We weren't as motivated. We ate a lot of cherries. And threw a lot at each other. And daydreamed a lot. So $8 a day was a pretty good take for us.
Even people whose grandpas weren't trying to teach them the value of a good honest days work ("why, when I was a kid, I'd work all week for a quarter...!") by making them pick for cash, would still spend plenty of summer mornings on ladders picking fruit. Everybody worked at the welfare farm, and for us, that meant picking fruit. Pears and peaches mostly. One year, just before the Orem Mall was built, the owner of the land told our stake president that if he would water and pick the orchard, the stake could have the fruit. So we had two orchards to pick that year. And they held off the bulldozers until after the harvest.
Yes, the Orem Mall used to be all orchards. So did just about everyplace else in Orem. UVSC campus: former orchards. The University Parkway stripmalls: deceased Orchards. Walmart, ex-Orchards. The used car lots along State Street: nevermore Orchards. The WordPerfect campus: deleted Orchards. Our Arthurs Court neighborhood: obliterated Orchards. All the other Orem neighborhoods, schools, shops, and office parks built since 1975, all former, used-to-be Orchards. Of course, "Orchard" elementary school and "The Orchards" shopping center..... well, you know.
Even the stake welfare farms are gone now. Somebody finally got to the welfare committee at last and made them crunch the numbers, and proved that it would take 748 years of picking peaches to make the same profit as selling one building lot to Ivory Homes.
But when I was a kid, you couldn't miss the orchards in Orem, since they were everywhere. It was a green, leafy, town in the summer, and rows and rows of skeletal shadows in winter. And even in the suburban enclaves that had been carved here and there into the orchards, most people had a tree or two in their yard, and I think they actually picked them in those days. Some late winter mornings you'd really be reminded about the orchards, since in case of cold-snap that threatened the blossoms, all the farmers would light up these acrid "smudge-pots" that would belch thick black smoke that would hang low in the orchards and (supposedly) raise the temperature a few degrees, enough to save the crop. Of course, the smoke would blanket the valley, so it was probably also enough to cause us all to have early onset emphysema... but then in those days we also had Geneva Steel, so we had battle-toughened lungs, immune to pollution, and besides what's a few extra zillion parts per billion of particulates among friends! Since everybody's dad either worked at Geneva or in an orchard, nobody complained...
One winter, my grandpa decided I needed to be taught the value of a days work when it was freezing outside as well. He got Mr Cordner, who owned all the orchards north of 800 North (where the golf course and all those zillion dollar McMansions are now) to hire me to help prune and fertilize his pear crop. I turned out to be no good at pruning. But I spread tons and tons of (probably highly toxic) Geneva by-product granular fertilizer up and down his miles and miles of pear rows. A nice Mexican guy driving the tractor, and me freezing and scooping industrial-smelling steel mill fertilizer on the trailer, and dumping it along the rows.
My grandpas were part-time farmers. They had regular "winter jobs" too, besides being farmers -- one was a high school teacher, the other a lawyer. Mr Cordner was a counselor at the high school. My sixth grade teacher, Mr Crandall, also had an orchard. He and his brothers, I think. And, unlike my grandpas' orchards which are, saldly, long gone, Mr Crandall's orchard is still there. It's one of the very last orchards in Orem. And unbelievably, its right on Center Street. They probably get calls 5 times a day from hungry real estate developers who can't wait to bulldoze the last trees in Orem and pack in some lovely vinyl and stucco Ivory ticky-tackies, but thankfully they have so far resisted. Beautiful purple-red apples and bright green pears. It's a reminder of where, besides the grocery store, apples come from. It's a good think we still have a few of them around. And the Crandalls just planted some new trees last year, so maybe they'll be around a while longer. I hope so.
(Apples and tractor from Crandall's orchard.)
6 comments:
thanks for the vivid picture and very enjoyable read (as always from the Davis household). andi, do you have any use for some huge hanging flower baskets? they were taken down early from downtown posts and i've got a dozen of them, worth $60 each. they could last another couple of weeks outside or be taken indoors for the winter. let me know...
Wow! I feel like I've just spent an hour in front of the console radio in a rocking chair listening to how things were in the good 'ol days. I can practically smell the apple pie baking, and see the rows and rows of freshly canned peaches on the kitchen counter. Ahh, life is good.
Well, Raquel, sounds like I should come take a look. Are you coming to the Art Legue meeting with Ike Bushman? I will call you.
Bertie - If I bring you the apples, will you bake the pie?
P.S. I have to say my favorite part is where Marco said the orchard that are now the old Novell campus were deleted. Thanks again, Sugar.
love love love this post! my family is all rooted in orem and i have to link this on my blog, if you don't mind. reminds me of my dad's childhood.
i love your blog. i think it's the only one i check daily.
Andi- loved Marco's orchard segment. Been there-done that but he says it better than I can. As i've been typing my Dad's WWII letters our 5 generation family farm in Edgemont is a huge part of subject matter in these old letters. Farms are amazing parts of families that have them.
love you and enjoy you so much
judy
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