Frank White was about eleven years old when his father took this photo of him in front of the family's old car and new home--which came with an apricot orchard--on Covington Road in Los Altos. World War II had just ended and the Whites were making a new start in the Santa Clara Valley.
People will think this story is about apricots. That's because I've written a book about the agricultural history of the Santa Clara Valley and its title is California Apricots: The Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley. The book is partly about apricots, and partly about a time worth remembering.
Values were different then. Our parents had survived the Great Depression and knew what it was like to barely get by. My uncle Jack, who died not long ago, spoke to me before he died about how the nickles and dimes he made on his paper route as a child, helped his mother pay the grocery bill. He wept when he told me about that difficult time.
That's why this little story, a true one, touched my heart when my neighbor Frank White told it to me recently. His daughters supplied the picture. He's a businessman, so his memory for numbers is excellent.
The piece appears this week in the Los Altos Town Crier. Thanks to Liz and Paul Nyberg for giving me the chance to write these columns and to editor Bruce Barton for being such a great colleague.
Click the link to read the story:
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