Some years ago, farmers only had so many acres.  They couldn’t afford to buy a lot of acres.  So a lot of people that lived in San Francisco or something had maybe 5 acres around here.  They used to come and buy the fruit off the trees.  They would estimate – guess – how much fruit was on a tree.  And then they would pay a down payment.  Then they would harvest it, and pay them the balance after they sold their fruit.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with fruit or not.  Well, if you look at a tree, it’s fruit is green, and you have to estimate.  Well, dad got very good at estimating.  He learned from grandpa how to estimate.  And one time he stripped the tree to see how many pounds were on the tree so that he could guess better.  So they would go and they would have go estimate for neighbors that didn’t want to harvest their fruit.  They would buy the fruit on the tree.

So that’s the way they got started.  My father and mother bought a 4 acre ranch on Laurel Avenue in Cupertino.  That’s where we were raised originally, and then my dad bought a place on the corner of Homestead and Highway 9, which is now De Anza Boulevard.  It used to be Sunnyvale Saratoga Road.  It used to be Mountain View – Saratoga, then it became Sunnyvale Saratoga, then became Highway 9, and now it’s De Anza Boulevard.  And it’s the same street! 

We picked prunes, and we cut apricots, and we loved it!  I cannot believe every time I think of it I hear people saying how we hated to pick prunes, and how we hated to cut apricots.  And I say, You know, we thought it was fun.  We used to have people come in the summertime.  When we were on Laurel Avenue, they used to come and stay in the basement.  And it was fun.  We’d get out there and visit, and we’d sing.  It wasn’t like today where you can’t have a minor in the yard today at all, cutting, because it’s against the law and they might get hurt.  Children were running around.  The whole family was there.  We used to have schoolteachers come in the summertime and help cut apricots.  They made a little extra money.  You know, it wasn’t like today.  We didn’t have payroll taxes.

The other day I met up with somebody and they never knew you packed cherries.  And I said, I cannot believe.  So I sat there and I said you used to get a little 8-pound box of cherries and you packed them in rows.  You fill them in, and then turn the tops down so the stem would go down, and so you had a finish on either side.  The fellas would seal them, nail them closed, and they would open them to see if you they were straight – to see if you had packed them straight – and then we would ship them back east.  That was in June.  So every June when we got home from school, from 4 to 5pm, I could pack one box.  Some people could pack two, but I would pack one box in one hour.

They started a school in Sunnyvale, and then they decided to combine Sunnyvale and Cupertino and make Fremont High School.  My sister Irene was in the one of the first graduating classes from Fremont.  So she graduated in 1927, and I graduated in 1929.  There was a class that graduated in February that graduated ahead of her, but she was in the first year class to graduate from Fremont.  And I graduated from Fremont too in 1929.

Every Sunday we would go to the different fields and watch the boys play basketball.  That was our activity.  When they had a picnic or something at Naperdak, then we would go there.  Every year after the harvest, we had a barn dance in our barn.  We were three girls, so we didn’t have any trouble…  Everybody came.  Brothers, sisters.  We didn’t go with couples or anything.  Families came.  The same way at Naperdak.  They made a fiddle out of an olive oil can, with strings on it, and they would play that.

The valley continues to change…

The people have come in.  We were 10, 20, 30, 40 acres apart.  And you knew everybody.  It wasn’t like today where the houses are so close.  And you can’t help it.  People are here.  There is work here for them, at least up until now.  Everything takes it takes it toll, and everything works its way around.  And I think if we are just patient…  some people will go home.  We won’t have as many people here, and I think it will all work out, but we have to patient.  We can’t push it.  And I feel sorry for the people who have lost their homes.  And I feel sorry for the people who have lost their jobs.  But many of them weren’t very careful either.  They bought too much, and they raised the prices of homes to something ridiculous, so that the poor schoolteachers, the firemen, and the people that are working couldn’t afford to live here.  And it’s not fair because without the teachers and the firemen, we’re not going to get along.  We need them.  And I think it’s interesting that some of the people that were making a lot of money are now becoming teachers…  I think that’s good.