October, 2021
After I blew the lid off my night time freeway frolics and doughnut feasts, my friend Cristina suggested more blogs about what this area was like before it became Silicon Valley. To give you a break from ALS Land, I’ve decided that I would take her up on it.
Before Apple, there were apricots. Lots of apricots, miles and miles of apricots. Every house had at least two trees and the rotten ones would fall on suburban lawns and squish between your toes. The unripe fruit made bruising projectiles when fired from a homegrown slingshot, and the over ripe fruit still on the tree always ended up in your hair.
We arrived in Cupertino in 1961. Behind the then fenceless backyard was an apricot orchard. Apricot orchards in blossom are a sublime sight and we would drive to mountain lookouts to gaze out at a valley that looked like patchwork snowfall. In the summer came the harvest, and the grounds of the Mariani packing plant, on what is now the southeast corner of De Anza Boulevard and 280, would turn to orange carpet as acres of apricots were laid out to dry.
After witnessing bulldozers turn that Cupertino apricot orchard into my first elementary school, we moved to Los Altos. As luck would have it, behind the back fence of our new abode was, you guessed it, an apricot orchard. My Dad would speak Spanish with the owner, who must have been in his 70s. Soon, my Dad had reached an arrangement with the owner: a bunch of dried apricots from the orchard in exchange for the services of my brother and me in a cotting shed. There is no greater antidote to the romance of agriculture then hot summer days in a low ceiling shack cutting open apricots to releave them of their pits and carefully laying the disembowled fruit on drying trays, sticky nectar coating your fingers. The full trays would then be placed in a chamber where, to keep off bugs during drying, the apricots would be exposed to sulphur smoke some of which always found its way back into the cotting shed where it would stick to your nectared fingers. My Dad got his dried apricots and I had to take extra baths.
I hate apricots.
Our house had fruit trees of its own. In addition to the ubiquitous apricots, we had an avocado, a fig, and I’m sure others. The back was ringed with Monterey Pines between two of which somebody had the wisdom to plant a cherry tree. Every spring we would climb the adjacent pine, perch on a strong limb, and gorge ourselves sick on cherries direct from the tree. On those afternoons, life was good.
Little did we know that up the street the seeds of a technology revolution were sprouting, watered by slide rules, transistors, and pocket protectors. We were just a couple of kids in a tree on a spring day blissfully unaware of the ground shifting under us.
See you next time.
Embrace The Suck 
Bob, your latest is a delight. I did not arrive in the Valley oof the Hearts Delight until 1973, my first year of law school af Santa Clara? Even then the valley still had acres and acres of the yellow carpet in the spring. Mariani’ was still in operation in Cupertino. Thanks for the look-back to a simpler time. Blessing, Art
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Wonderful, wonderful story, and much closer to my fonder memories of Santa Clara Valley before freeways and Apple. Just sad you lost your taste for apricots, but my Dad picked pears in his youth and never ate any thereafter too. Thanks for sharing, Dick
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HI, Bob. Wow! You have a whole new line of stories to tell! Looks like another book in the offing! Don’t stop, now! Thanks, Stan
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I love apricots, but then I was never dragooned into working in a cotting shed. My father refused to ever plant sunflowers after working in the sunflower fields in Texas. And Dave dislikes both eggs and chicken, thanks to working in a chicken factory in high school. But I am happy that you wrote about a time in the valley before big tech changed everything. It sounds like paradise, minus the cotting sheds, of course.
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Wow how things have changed. I like apricots but when it is work it’s different Than just enjoying them.
Happy Halloween 🎃🎃Marie
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You are such an amazing and engaging writer Bob, honestly don’t mean to sound corny, but I could actually relish the taste of those overripe cherries. But then to actually remember the details of those adventures, making history alive, I loved this chapter.
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Thanks for sharing your personal history, tied to the history of this place we love, but we know has both lost and gained much over time.
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Things have definitely changed. We moved from Sunnyvale to Los Altos in 1966. Along with the loss of apricot orchards you mentioned, as I recall Foothill Expressway had been recently put in to replace train tracks. The house we moved into and those around us had been there for many years. And yes, we had an apricot orchard in the front! In the first several years the trees were very prolific and my mom made apricot pies, apricot syrup, canned apricots, dried apricots, And probably other things with the apricots 🙂 I to was put to work pitting and cutting out bruised areas or any critters (worms) That it taken at home in the apricots. Oh I remember those sticky hands. Fortunately the apricots The apricot trees began to have smaller and smaller crops until eventually the trees stopped bearing fruit and they were cut down. Unlike you though Bob, I still like apricots 🙂
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Mr. Robles was the orchard owner’s name! He gave Marcy and me a branch on one of the trees in the corner and we could pick any apricots that grew on that branch. In my child’s eyes, the apricots were as big as peaches! He also had an elevator in that old Hacienda house on the property! And remember the goose???? What an amazing place to grow up!!! I still think if you put me back in the original house and blind folded me, I could walk through without bumping anything. Thank you for bringing back such happy memories! Loved that neighborhood! Maybe some stories about the family pets??? Zibboooo, Jenny, Rasputin!!!!
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Bob, I had no idea that you also suffered in the cutting sheds as a kid. You describe the sulfur smell in the sheds perfectly.
The heat was terrible and I couldn’t look at another apricot or peach for years. But I do remember feeling pretty rich at the end of each season. Those little per box punch cards turned into real cash.
— Lois
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What a great evocation of that time, before so much changed over the years. We moved to Sunnyvale in 1963. Our yard had four apricot trees, and our small neighborhood was still surrounded on three sides by orchards. There was even an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of one, which of course we called a haunted house. Even all through high school, there was still one small orchard left, which I’d walk alongside on the way to school. I was never forced to work in a cotting shed, so I still love apricots. To this day though, it still feels a little odd to buy them in a store. A part of me still feels like they should still be just outside, there for the taking.
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Lots of memories in this visually presented memoir! I spend every weekend with my grandmother in Mountain View in the 50’s. She had an orchard behind her house (the house still exists as the last residence on El Camino in MV and the orchard was plowed under to become apartments which my grandmother built as a single woman in the 60’s, but that’s another story). Of course there were apricot trees, as well as peach and cherry. Blenheim apricots, which are the best but rare to find since the stores don’t carry them because they are not “pretty.” We still get them from local orchards, which are fast disappearing also, and I devour them with delight. My mother and grandmother worked in the canneries in the 30’s and 40’s. I sometimes yearn for those days, so your post was quite nostalgic. Thank you!
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