Vince Cala
My Early Days in Sunnyvale

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My name is Vince Cala. I lived on the Old San Francisco road. Which was known at that time, where we are at now, as Sunken Gardens. As I recall, from my childhood days, let's see, about nineteen forty-four, I was about thirteen, the World War Two was going on and the army was stationed- not many people know- the army was stationed in Washington Park. From the best of my recollection I guess they were getting ready for the invasion of Japan. World War II had ended in Europe, so the West Coast was full of soldiers, and they were stationed over there. It must have been an infantry company, because they would come down here and there were target set up at that end where the palm trees are, against the bank. There was a bank that ran further than it is today, and they would practice all day. We could hear the-the whole neighborhood could hear all day- the firing, and the soldiers marching back and forth. During the time that they were there, when they'd leave, we'd come down as kids and the lead would hit the targets and fall on the ground. We'd pick up the lead; we'd actually fight for the lead. We would take it to Frank Ferry on Saturdays, and we'd have sacks of lead. We would use prune sacks that my father had from our farming. And we would put it in the sack, bring it to Frank X Ferry who was the hardware store in Sunnyvale, that was the collection point for the war effort, and we would get a nickel a pound. That was big money. And then all of a sudden when they dropped the atom bomb that was the end of the war and they just disappeared. Washington Park was emptied, the Quonset huts left, everything was dismantled over here and it went back to being a gravel pit. And this dirt that came out of here went to build Moffett Field and the Bayshore Highway, or as they call it 101 now, but in those days it was the Bayshore because it was low to the water. And that covers that area.

Okay, there was this fellow named Steve, and I can't think of his last name, that bought this piece of dirt here for Thirty thousand dollars. And I remember that, I thought the fellow was nuts. And all of a sudden bulldozers- about 1957 more or less I can't remember the exact date- about 1955 he got bulldozers and he built this miniature golf course, the nine-holer. He became successful and they called it Sunken Gardens, but it really never sank. This is all dirt that was hauled away. The rock was, I never said this before but the rock was perfect. You could make concrete from the rock, that's how clean it was. Then the city wanted [the rock] and they turned around and they bought it from him and he sold out.

The significance of Dawson's corner- It was okay in the day of the horse and buggy, because there were two curves. This was the original El Camino, and in those days it was okay because when a horse and a buggy went by, or a horse and a wagon, or a fellow on horseback didn't have to worry because a horse could make the corner. But as the automobile came into play they were running into problems. When they made the corner, especially in the latter part of the day when a little alcohol was behind the wheel, they would hang the corner and they would roll over. Well I guess that didn't go very well… so what they did is they cut a corner from Murphy Avenue to the El Camino over here. After Roosevelt came into office and there was the New Deal and he was out deficit spending and they used this money to correct a lot of the things that they knew that was wrong, and that was one of them. And that piece of road was put in. That piece was put it to eliminate the cars turning over on the corner. But that didn't stop it because there was always people taking that road. As a little boy we could be sitting at the table in the evening and we could here the cars squealing around the corner and all of a sudden you'd hear them banging against the trees and we'd run and go see and the wheels would be turning and the fellas would be climbing out of the cars. Anyway, I petered out. Living on the Old San Francisco Road put us close to Schuckl's Cannery which was on Fair Oaks which was by the railroad track cause you gotta have the railroad track for them to get there necessary items to can. Sugar used to come in liquid in tank cars before it was refined cause when you can something it doesn't make any difference. We would deliver to the cannery. In those days there were no forklifts. Canneries were built with platforms. Everything was built with platforms. The truck would drive by and you would unload your fruit right off of the truck. Naturally when they got forklifts everything changed, but that's the way it was done.

Naturally, when you're canning a lot of fruit, just like any other business, cans get dented. So they would just dump them in these big trucks to take them to some place, maybe to give them away to who knows. I don't know what they did; they might have sold them as dented. But they were on these open trucks, and as they would drive down the road- the trucks had lattes- the cans would fall out of the lattes. So they would be all along the road. So as kids we would pick 'em up and take 'em home and it was a guessing game: what was in the can? We'd open them up and there'd be peaches, there'd be pears, fruit cocktail. It was guess what was in the can. But that went on every year. We'd make sure we were out there picking up all the cans that would fall. They weren't labeled, that's how come we wouldn't know, because they were unlabeled. Okay, all right, that takes care of that.

Vince Cala

Family and Farm Life

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Like I said before, my name is Vince Cala. My family came from the old country. My father came from Sicily in 1920, when he got out of the army in World War One. He served in the Italian army during World War One, and when he got out there wasn't much for him to go home to. So he came to America. My mother came from Calabria with her family. Families immigrated and single fellows immigrated. It just so happened that my grandfather, my mother's father just so happened to have sired a bunch of daughters, and he made wives for all these young immigrant boys that came here, and my mother was one of them. Coming off of the ranch she was perfect for the home life of a farm lady. She was a farm wife. She loved the life on the ranch. And we had chickens. We lived just like they would have in the old country. We had chickens, a garden. The manure from the chickens went to take care of the garden. The heads of lettuce and the corn and the different types of vegetables that grew, grew fantastic. We had plenty of water. My father made wine and if he had too much he would sell it. In those days I think it was - and it was legal- 50 cents a gallon if you brought your own gallon. I wasn't born on the Old San Francisco Road, but in 1932, more towards Dawson's corner, going north on the right side of the street, my father acquired 10 acres of land in 1929, before the depression. And there was no house; there was nothing on the property. It was just an orchard. When the depression got bad where he worked, he had to move to the property and he built- the best he could do at the time- he built a house on the property. And he built at that time a five-room house with a full basement and a big garage for twenty-five hundred dollars. Today you can't buy a door.

Though my father got in to agriculture, to supplement his income he started a little winery over here on the old road. At one time we had ten thousand gallons that he had made and between what he made and other varieties that he bought, we had a little winery. People would come and buy, but he didn't continue. It lasted until about 1941 and he quit. He got more interested in agriculture and fruit farming and he got out of the wine business. Besides, he used to get a lot of people that would come around half-boozed and that wasn't exactly… It's a little different today in a wine tasting room. A little different. A lot of people wonder why the orchards disappeared through the years. Well there's a couple of reasons. One is when the early settlers came here and decided to plant orchards, the pulled out the oak trees that were here to make room for the orchards. And when they did that I think there was an omen from God, if you want to get theological about it. But what happened was the trees got even- the Oak trees. They started to spread the Oakroot Fungus. It didn't stop at the fall of the tree- where the limbs end the roots are supposed to end. It kept spreading. Every orchard that had an [Oak] tree that had been pulled out, you'd see a big circle of [fruit] trees missing. We had it in our own orchard and it kept spreading constantly.

Wherever an oak tree was left the trees prospered. A good example of is at the Cala Center there's an oak tree in the middle of the center, and the trees around that oak tree prosper- didn't die. And it even speaks well for the center. That does well, too. And then there was another disease that hit apricots, and I don't know the biological name, but we called it Die Back. The trees would start to die on the apricots especially, beautiful trees. The limbs would start to die back. This is a disease that came from Australia from what I heard and the limbs would start to die and we were doing a lot of cutting and eventually it was gonna go. Between the Oakroot Fungus and the Die Back on the apricots, it had to happen; eventually it had to happen. I hate to say it was the best thing that happened because then the industry changes from "Valley of Hearts Delight" it went to "Silicon Valley." But that had to happen. Maybe that's just the way things had to be.

We would even replant in an Oakroot Fungus area and we would buy plants that the rootstock was Oakroot Fungus resistant and the tree was grafted so when we planted them we made sure the graft was out of the ground and the tree grew. But just as soon as a little bit of the dirt touched that graft: Fungus, the tree right away melee with mushrooms. That's how ferocious the fungus was. And then you'd just… you know, you lost out. You can only fight so much. God got even…if you want to be theological about it.

Vince Cala

Work Hard, Play Hard

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Sunnyvale had about 2500 people [in the 1930s and 1940s?], so there wasn't much that went on other than during the summertime. Naturally during the summertime, the population exploded. The people would come in to work in the canneries. People would come in to work in the fruit orchards. They would come from the Central Valley, [and] Texas, and they would come here because by that time, by summer, the [harvesting of] oranges was over with and they would come here to pick the fruit. They would come with their families, and they would camp out in the orchards, under the trees, in the barn. We had buildings for them to stay in- they would stay there during the summer. There were some great memories of the times that these people came and would work. The nice thing about it [was] what they made was all theirs. They didn't pay rent. They had the use of the facilities there. They made their summertime money and then they would go back and follow the fruit and move back in the wintertime. But that's how we got our stuff picked here because there wasn't that many people here, but all of a sudden, they would show up for that reason. And you could get away with living in those kinds of conditions. Today, you couldn't get away with it because the health department would rake you over the coals.

As [my family] began to go further into agriculture and after the war, we were able to buy a bigger piece of equipment. We had a Caterpillar, a D-2. And with that tractor, I could work 2 acres an hour and in 5 hours I could work 10 acres all at one time. It would burn about 2 gallons of diesel an hour. We were able to do a lot of work with that piece of equipment. It would do more work than we ever expected, and sometimes I'd be on that tractor 10 hours a day.

When we sprayed in the old days, we used a combination of bluestone, lime, and oil. The oil was to that took care of the scale. The bluestone kept the fruit trees dry, especially the apricots. [It] kept the trees dry so that no fungicide [took root]. And you would spray them as the bloom began to pop out. You would spray it with copper or bluestone and mix [the trees] according to the formula of [adding] so much water. Then you'd have a spray gun in your hand, you'd have a hose, you'd walk behind the rig and you'd spray the trees. And later on they put a platform on the back of the rig - the machines got more powerful - and we would spray from the back of the rig. And then after that, they even got a little better - then they had it [done] automatically - they had a fan in the back and that would do it. When you sprayed by hand, [you had to be careful]. We kept a can of Ponds cream and we put it all over our faces because that stuff would burn - let me tell you - it looked [like] we came from the beach - from the [residue produced by the] burning of oil and spray material. You had to rub your arms because if you didn't, as you moved up and down, the jackets would slide, and it would cut into your hand, and it would take forever to heal. That bluestone was tough to get rid of. I remember that too.

As we got older, we used to work on the ranch. In the summertime, everybody went to Santa Cruz but we had to work. So, as we got to be able to drive - and it didn't take long to get to Santa Cruz, to the Cocoanut Grove - sometimes we would leave at 9:30 at night to go to the Cocoanut Grove to dance, and then have to go home again at two or three o'clock in the morning. We'd have to get up at six again to go back to work. We were shot half of the time.