Back in my day, we got our food the old fashioned way.  We grew it!  These young whippersnappers today have no idea where food even comes from, let alone that it can grow and thrive in your own backyard.  And all this food shipped in from Chile and Peru used to be grown right here in California, Orange County to be specific.  Why, I oughta…

Ahem.  Sorry ’bout that, I got a little carried away.  It’s true though.  It does seem like kids growing up in OC today have no clue where their food comes from, and the concept of fresh food is practically passé.  The growing of a backyard garden has been relegated to the old fogies, granola crunching environmentalists, and right wing survivalist nut jobs.  The agriculture industry in America, in California, in Orange County has been outsourced to countries south of the border where labor is cheaper and growing seasons near the equator are more favorable to American demands for plums and grapefruits out of season.

However, back in the day, my family had a backyard garden.  It thrived on the rich farm land where our house was built (oh progress!) and I am certain it saved our family a lot of money.  We grew beets, Swiss chard, carrots, green onions, tomatoes, radishes, strawberries, zucchini, yellow squash, artichokes, parsley, and probably more I am not remembering.  We also had a tangerine tree and later my parents planted a lemon tree.  

Having come from parents who were well oriented with home grown foodstuffs, plus the fact that their parents had survived the Great Depression (i.e. they were frugal) and my dad started his own company, having a garden made a lot of sense to us.  In later years, my mom worked for The Irvine Company, at that time one of the largest agricultural companies in the area.  They had fields all over Irvine, and once the fields were no longer commercially viable, employees were invited to a company pick.  Basically, a whole bunch of people showed up at o-dark-thirty in their grubbies with baskets and boxes in the backs of the station wagons that lined the field roads.  We all picked and dug whatever the crop was and at the end of the day you could take home as much as you could carry.  Well, having a Ford LTD station wagon, we could carry A LOT.

Our family dug asparagus, picked green beans, corn, strawberries, and others but these picks stay in my mind the best.  I don’t like asparagus so I was particularly resentful of digging in this big field all by myself for the shoots of green bitterness.  Strawberries were equally hard on the body, not because I didn’t like the result, but because they are low to the ground and it’s hard on your back to stoop, pick, put in your basket, repeat.  Green beans were pretty easy because you could stand up to pick them.  Corn was really fun actually because you could hide among the stalks and get lost in your own little corn world and it smelled so good.  After one corn pick, I remember the wagon back seats were folded down and that car was filled from the back of the front seats to the tailgate, and all the way to the ceiling!  We sat on the tailgate and ate corn right off the cob, uncooked.  It was so sweet, juicy and crunchy!  I’ll never forget it.

The benefit of the company picks and of our backyard garden was that my resourceful mother would put up whatever harvest we had just brought in.  I recall us shucking corn, and her boiling ear after ear of corn, then cutting the corn off the cob and putting it in these special plastic bags.  She had one of those heat-sealing machines and an enormous freezer in the garage.  We had fresh corn, beans, and yes, probably asparagus, all year round.  She made strawberry jam, strawberry purée and fresh strawberry ice cream.  To this day, I cannot eat strawberry jam.  It was all we had for many years and just the thought of it is too much. 

We even grew our own Christmas trees for several years.  Around Christmas, those little trees are available at the hardware store.  Well, my dad would take one out back and plant it in this one part of the yard.  After a couple years, it would be 6-7′ tall.  If you have ever gone to the choose & cut places, you know how much money we saved just with a homegrown Christmas tree and it was something we had helped to grow over the years, making it all the more meaningful at that sentimental time of year.

Back in my day, we were the original organic family but we were the rule, not the exception.  Today I miss the fresh produce that we took out of our yard.  It would be nice for young people to realize the benefits of growing their own produce.  You hear it all the time “it just tastes better!” and that’s just one aspect of fresh-from-the-garden food.  Maybe one day with Melody I will grow a crop of something.  I’m pretty good with tomatoes, even though I cannot stand them.  We’ll see.  I want her to know where her food comes from, to understand that someone has to plant it, tend it, harvest it and ship it, all before we wander through Vons and buy it.  I want her to know that those cute little white strawberry stands are all that remains of Orange County’s great legacy of agriculture.

…some Girl Scout Cookies?  We used to go door-to-door in the neighborhood, ringing doorbells or knocking, hoping someone would place an order for the much beloved cookies produced by the Little Brownie Bakers.  This annual tradition was something I dreaded. And my mom was the troop leader at times so I had to do it.

I hated going door-to-door, asking people to order the cookies and I especially dreaded going back and asking for the money.  I can remember doing this alone in the afternoons after school.  I wore my sash with all my badges and I’m sure every person who opened the door could tell that I did not want to be there at all.

But I also stressed out over not selling the most cookies.  I was intimidated and competitive at the same time.  I was a frustrated child.

That’s not our troop but you have to just admire the woman who dares to put together a horizontally striped sweater with a floral blouse!

Can you even imagine a ten-year-old girl going door-to-door these days?  Alone?  Not on your life. 

Here’s a really interesting and fun article from the Sussex Countian with some history of the Girl Scout Cookie and where I nicked these faboo pictures.

I had a Brownie Beanie.  I admit it.

I mentioned in a previous post that across the street from our house, a school had been built.  It was a typical early 70’s design, single story and sprawling, dark brown with orange doors.  Stylish!  It has a green belt in front of the school with pine trees dotted across the lawn.  These trees are very mature now and probably 50′ high or more.  The kindergarten playground was slightly kitty corner to our house, more in front of the next door neighbors’ and had Wizard of Oz themed swing sets.  The Scarecrow always creeped me out a little because his metal mouth gaped open in a big, toothless grin that suggested a doorway to hell instead of an opening for brain insertion.  Yikes!

So, our next door neighbors – who have long since moved away – were the only family on the block with older kids.  While most of the families had young children, these people had teenagers.  They had muscle cars in the driveway whose engines were tinkered with endlessly by the older boy and his buddies.  They had skanky friends who loitered out front and on the grass of the green belt at the school.  They would sit under the trees at night and talk about the universal subjects teenagers discuss – the opposite sex, sex, music, cars and school.  I assume.  I was only around 7.  I wasn’t even invited to these kinds of parties when I was a teenager, so I am really stretching here.

One evening, I heard my dad grumbling about the teenagers huddled under the trees across the street.  Remember, I was about 7 when I heard this.  “grumble grumble…having a doggone pot party over there!” is all I heard (and it likely wasn’t “doggone” I heard, either).  We were probably getting ready for dinner since I remember sitting at the counter in a barstool at the time I heard that.  My simple mind contemplated what a pot party would be…  Take yourself back…you are 7 years old…your dad has just said something intriguing…

Cue harp music that is overused in TV shows to indicate a dream sequence…

Girl in peasant blouse and bell bottoms holds goldenrod colored saucepan in one hand. “Tracy, I don’t like this pot, give me yours.”

Second girl in Hang Loose tee shirt and cut offs holds avacado green colored double-boiler in her lap.  “No way, Jeannie, I brought this one and I have to take it back ho-ome.”

Third girl in tube top and red polyester pants sighs in frustration.  “Jeeze you guys, we came here to share our pots, now don’t be selfish Tracy!  Pass the pot!”

Fade back into present with obnoxious harp music. 

They weren’t really having a Pampered Chef party, were they?

When I think about where I grew up, my memories of course are somewhat limited to a small geography.  I mean, kids think about things in terms of going to the park, or how far it is to Wendy’s house, and will this trip be on foot or can a bike make it go faster/easier/more fun?  I grew up in a part of Orange County that was going through a development boom during the 70s.  Much of the OC was doing this during the 70s, but where I lived had been an asparagus field until our house was built.  Somewhere there are pictures of the house actually being built.  I loved the smell of the construction materials, the fresh cut wood, the dry wall, plaster, mastic, and other things used in new home construction. I have a small memory of coming around the corner to our street on the last day of moving, just knowing we would not go back to the old house.  I was 3 when we moved in and by the time I was 4 I had fallen down the stairs at least once.  These were not the days of baby gates.  We had a straight staircase with a tile entry at the bottom, e.g. a gangway to head trauma.  Fortunately the falls did not bust my noggin.  A school was built right across the street from our house, which at the time was great for walking to school, but now that many students come from outside the area via bus or Mom-taxi, the traffic is horrendous and is the bane of my parents’ lives.

Around the corner and across the street from our house is Fountain Valley Hospital, but on the same side of the street was a bean field.  It was rumored that the owner of the bean field had a big dog and a shotgun, and that he would either shoot or have his dog maim trespassing children who wanted to cut the corner to get to the other tract of houses “way over there” where Hillary lived. The street was one of those that sort of drifted out of asphalt and up to a dirt path on the sides; there were no sidewalks, curbs or gutters.  There was a margin of weeds between the street and the dirt path, which was probably about 2 feet higher than street level but seemed like the Cliffs of Dover to my youngster’s depth perception.  There were no trees, no shade, and the path was baked in the sun and hardpacked from the people who walked it.  About midway on this path is the spot where some 25 years later a woman will be killed in a “mistaken identity” murder-for-hire while she is out on her walk.  On that other corner was Mile Square Park – a safe park for little kids growing up in the OC back in the 70s.  Back then it was baseball, football and frisbee instead of soccer, soccer and more soccer.  My peers and I remember when “the new section” was built and how marvelous it was!  There were new structures to climb, new paths to explore…  Then some boy had to go and jump fall off the top of the tower there and die, and it was ruined forever, probably long gone by now.  In the center of Mile Square was the landing strip where the land sailers would race and the helicopters from Los Alamitos Air Station would do night landing practices.  We became used to the sounds of helicopters, which was a good thing once the hospital became a regional trauma center.

All around us were fields – strawberry, beans, asparagus, other.  I don’t really know what these other crops were and probably I should but I don’t think I’ll ever bother to find out.  We could see the fireworks from Disneyland early on, but now they have been completely obscured by development and we only hear them at 9:35 pm.  There are fewer and fewer fields and more and more strip malls and indistrial centers (ugh, currently in various stages of vacancy).  Where there now is a Costco shopping center was a field.  The Sam’s Club location used to be the Gemco where we got our school clothes and I bought my very first record (Madonna for those who are interested).  The Market Basket is now a Drug Emporium.  The empty fields around the hospital are developed with office buildings, senior housing and a college headquarters. 

Our membership number at Los Caballeros is a really low number.  I don’t know where they are now in their numbers, but ours is 4-digit and starts with 1.  When we joined, they had a rinky dink building, practically a shanty, 5 or 10 tennis courts, and big dreams, but nothing else.  The industrial complexes that surround Los Cab, even the post office, did not exist.  I recall the building of the Olympic sized pool and the setbacks due to heavy rains raising the water table which was transversed by the deep end of the pool.  It sure was glorious once finished though! 

There were stables along the river trail, acres of open space, fewer traffic lights and much less traffic.  Yes, it was a different time in OC and in my little world where I grew up.  I am going to try to turn this into a repeating theme but for right now it’s too much to boil down.  I don’t even think I’ve captured much of the essence of being 7 in the OC in 1975.  It even smelled different than it does now.  I’m amazed to realize that I remember the smell of OC in the 70s.  It was hot, dusty, flowery, fruity, construction-y.  It smelled of transition, I guess.