Richard Angelino, Fred Angelino, Angelo Benassi, Joe Rizzuto, Al Gagliardi, Don Manzo
prunes off the ground, raking the roads smooth to ensure the delicate fruit wasn’ t damaged as it was trucked from the fields to the drying area to be sun dried— was being automated using modern mechanical harvesting machines.
Natural sun drying was accelerated with dehydrators, which altered the farmer’ s workload; but didn’ t lessen it.
“ My dad used to sleep in the barn, to pull the cars out of the dehydration tunnel. Every hour he had to get up, and pull the car out, and put another one in. Basically, my dad went without sleep and he went to work the next morning, every other day he wouldn’ t sleep,” Stan Perino said.
Fred Angelino, 99 years young, believes the mechanization process was one reason for Gilroy’ s decline in the industry.“ Here, we had to do it by hand, and our crop was long and spread out, where it would be four or five pickings, and it was all hand harvest.”
Bellezza believes the decline was also due to the San Joaquin Valley.“ What happened was the Valley kind of took over, just like everything else.”
By the 1960s and‘ 70s, high tech companies began populating the area and Santa Clara Valley transitioned from the Prune Capital of the World to Silicon Valley. It wasn’ t until the mid 1980s that society’ s concerns about healthy eating and lowering cholesterol rekindled interest in the California dried plum. The“ High Fiber Fruit Campaign” of the‘ 80s resulted in a four-year growth in domestic shipments of the fruit.
In 2000, with FDA approval, the California Prune Board was granted permission to use“ dried plums” as an alternative name to prunes. This name change has been credited with an upswing of sales over the next 10 years. With continued interest in healthy eating habits, the dried plum is destined to remain a staple for many years to come.
For the local families who experienced the prune industry’ s peak, their memories continue to provide an emotional connection to an era when work was hard, money was tight, and everything relied on the family business.
“ My fondest memory is, I learned to drive in the orchard, I was about 10 or 11. I drove the truck, but I had one condition, I had to clear the road up ahead, don’ t dare step on a prune,” Filice said.
Kickham Wolfe’ s favorite memory is the prune boxes.“ I loved to make forts with those boxes, when the work was done.”
For Al Gagliardi, who grew up in
the prune business and became a Deputy Sheriff after returning from the war, his pursuit of those prune boxes, and the memories they preserve, resulted in an impressive collection.
“ Al’ s got over 150 unique prune boxes,” Benassi, said. Gagliardi, with the help of Benassi and Phil Laursen, created a book entitled“ Preserving Gilroy’ s Prune Heritage” that showcases his collection. It’ s available at the Gilroy Museum.
For Al Ciacco, it’ s the olfactory sense that triggers his memories.“ I used to love the smell of the prunes from the dehydrators, you know that smell in the air,” he said with a smile.“ Ten years or so ago they used to [ dry prunes ] in Morgan Hill, and I used to drive up there just to smell it.”
Don Manzo said prune farming literally changed his life.“ Well, when I was raising prunes I was still a bachelor, and we had this family that came [ to help us pick ], from Texas. They had three girls, they were adults, and I finally married one of them.”
Richard Perino said he appreciated moving beyond traditional harvesting to using machinery:“ The memory I have is when we were 14, we actually helped with the processing of the prunes... we would load the trucks and then we would dump them into the hopper, and dip them. It was good.”
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2017 gmhtoday. com
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