When I was a boy, just after I turned 10 years old, we moved from Colorado to California. Now, I was born in California and we'd moved away when I was just 5 years old. I was excited to move back "home".
We moved to a house that was in the middle of an almond orchard. The almond orchard was surrounded by grape vineyards and the grape vineyards were interspersed with tomato and corn fields, as well as apricot and pistachio orchards.
Grandpa noticed that there was a small section of almond orchard near our house that was not being worked. He found out who the owner was and called him. The man lived in Florida. Grandpa wanted to know if the man would let us harvest the almonds that grew wild on the property, and the man said he would.
So Grandpa bought a heavy rubber hammer that looked like a cross between an axe and a club. He also bought an almond scoop that looked like a heavy wire basket that had been turned into a shovel. We got some long bamboo poles and our old utility trailer and we went to work.
Every day in September, after school, we came home and started harvesting almonds. First we took that big mallet and hit the trees as hard as we could. That would shake the branches and make most of the almonds fall into the sandy soil under the trees. Then we would take the bamboo poles and reach high into the trees and knock the stubborn nuts out one at a time.
When all the nuts were on the ground we raked them into piles and scooped them into our utility trailer. As we scooped them up, we made sure to shake the scoop so that the sand and grass and sticks fell through the wire basket, leaving only almonds.
Now, almonds don't look like the ones you buy in the store, or even the ones you get in your Christmas stocking when they come out of the tree. They're covered in a fuzzy green hull that splits open when the nuts are ripe, exposing that hole-y, beautiful buff-colored woody shell. So we loaded our trailer full of nuts with the hulls and shells still on them.
When the trailer was so full that almonds were piled above the edges and the springs were pushed almost flat, we hooked it to our Volkswagen bus and pulled it to the almond processing plant that was in the middle of one of the orchards near us. We drove onto a giant scale and got weighed. Then we emptied our almonds into a machine that spun them and knocked them around. That machine knocked the hulls off and spat out golden-shelled nuts. Then the nuts went into another machine that cracked the shells and separated the nut meat from the shells.
This process took some time, so we left the almond processing plant, got weighed on our way out, and went home. We knew how much to pay the almond processing plant owner for his work because he subtracted our empty weight on the way out from our loaded weight on the way in and charged us a certain amount of money per pound to hull and shell the nuts.
Later in the week, the plant owner called and we went and picked up our shelled almonds. They were in burlap sacks that weighed more than you do. When we got them home we divided the nuts into smaller bags that weighed between 1 and 5 pounds. And we sold those nuts to neighbors and friends.
We saved all the money we made from those nuts and in the middle of winter, after Christmas vacation was over and all the kids were back in school, we would rent a condominium at a ski resort near Lake Tahoe and ski for a whole week. Uncle Eric, Uncle Dean and Uncle Paul and I would ski with Grandma and Grandpa. And we would ski all day. At night we would stay in the condo and do our homework we'd brought with us and the assignments our teachers had given us to work on during the week.
Every day of the week. Until it was time to go home.
I remember the first time I tried to ski. I was pretty sure I didn't like it.
It was a cold day with snow and rain mixing in the uniquely Sierra Nevada season of "springter". The beginner slope didn't have a chair lift to sit on and ride up. Instead it had what we called a "pommel lift". The pommel lift was a cable that moved up the slope. And attached to the cable was a rope with a disc-like seat on it. The trick was to catch the rope, put it between your legs, let the disc catch you on the bottom, and stay on your skis as the cable pulled you up the hill.
I was already cold and wet and scared and discouraged before I had to face that contraption. When it was my turn to ride up, the lift caught me off balance and I fell into the snow. My skis tangled and I couldn't get up. I was crying and mad. And then a nice woman skied over to me and picked me up. I must have been saying something about "stupid skis" and "hate this" and "don't want to" because she made me look at her and very calmly and confidently told me that I just needed to give it another try. By the end of the day, she assured me, I would be loving it.
Sometimes it's good for a young boy to have a beautiful older woman be confident in his abilities. When she was done with her pep talk, I would have done anything she told me to, because I believed she believed I could.
I mastered the pommel lift on my next try and only let it throw me once or twice more that day. When I got to the top of the slope all I knew was that pointing my skis downhill would make me go fast and that pointing my toes together and pushing my heels out would slow me down.
And so I went down. When I felt like I was going too fast I pointed my toes and pushed my heels. When that didn't work, I bailed. Down I went in an explosion of snow and skis. Then I found my gear, put my skis back on, and started over again.
And by the end of the day I was LOVING it!
For the next 7 years we made it a tradition to have our ski week and we found every other excuse we could to get to the mountains to ski.
In January 1988 I was in the middle of my senior year of high school. We rented a condo at Squaw Valley and on the first run of the first day Uncle Eric and I took on a short and fairly straightforward black diamond run for expert skiers. Less than halfway down, I got stuck in the bottom of a mogul and when I made my hop-turn everything on my body turned.
Except my right leg below the knee.
For years I'd wondered how embarrassing it was for those skiers who had to be pulled off the mountain by the heroes in red jackets that worked for the Ski Patrol.
Now I was finding out. Grandpa took me to the ski resort clinic where I got a brace to strap onto my swollen leg.
And that was the last time I skied with my brothers. I spent the rest of the week in the condo with partially torn ligaments in my knee that would prevent me from doing much normal walking for most of my last semester of high school.
After I joined the Army I was stationed in Germany. I bought a great pair of skis and boots and skied all over Europe. It was fun, but it wasn't the same as skiing with my brothers.
This January I got to ski with my brother again. Uncle Eric and I met in Park City, Utah with our kids. They learned to ski and snowboard while he and I got to enjoy each other's company as we rode up and tore down the mountains.
Just like old times.
We moved to a house that was in the middle of an almond orchard. The almond orchard was surrounded by grape vineyards and the grape vineyards were interspersed with tomato and corn fields, as well as apricot and pistachio orchards.
Grandpa noticed that there was a small section of almond orchard near our house that was not being worked. He found out who the owner was and called him. The man lived in Florida. Grandpa wanted to know if the man would let us harvest the almonds that grew wild on the property, and the man said he would.
So Grandpa bought a heavy rubber hammer that looked like a cross between an axe and a club. He also bought an almond scoop that looked like a heavy wire basket that had been turned into a shovel. We got some long bamboo poles and our old utility trailer and we went to work.
Every day in September, after school, we came home and started harvesting almonds. First we took that big mallet and hit the trees as hard as we could. That would shake the branches and make most of the almonds fall into the sandy soil under the trees. Then we would take the bamboo poles and reach high into the trees and knock the stubborn nuts out one at a time.
When all the nuts were on the ground we raked them into piles and scooped them into our utility trailer. As we scooped them up, we made sure to shake the scoop so that the sand and grass and sticks fell through the wire basket, leaving only almonds.
Now, almonds don't look like the ones you buy in the store, or even the ones you get in your Christmas stocking when they come out of the tree. They're covered in a fuzzy green hull that splits open when the nuts are ripe, exposing that hole-y, beautiful buff-colored woody shell. So we loaded our trailer full of nuts with the hulls and shells still on them.
When the trailer was so full that almonds were piled above the edges and the springs were pushed almost flat, we hooked it to our Volkswagen bus and pulled it to the almond processing plant that was in the middle of one of the orchards near us. We drove onto a giant scale and got weighed. Then we emptied our almonds into a machine that spun them and knocked them around. That machine knocked the hulls off and spat out golden-shelled nuts. Then the nuts went into another machine that cracked the shells and separated the nut meat from the shells.
This process took some time, so we left the almond processing plant, got weighed on our way out, and went home. We knew how much to pay the almond processing plant owner for his work because he subtracted our empty weight on the way out from our loaded weight on the way in and charged us a certain amount of money per pound to hull and shell the nuts.
Later in the week, the plant owner called and we went and picked up our shelled almonds. They were in burlap sacks that weighed more than you do. When we got them home we divided the nuts into smaller bags that weighed between 1 and 5 pounds. And we sold those nuts to neighbors and friends.
We saved all the money we made from those nuts and in the middle of winter, after Christmas vacation was over and all the kids were back in school, we would rent a condominium at a ski resort near Lake Tahoe and ski for a whole week. Uncle Eric, Uncle Dean and Uncle Paul and I would ski with Grandma and Grandpa. And we would ski all day. At night we would stay in the condo and do our homework we'd brought with us and the assignments our teachers had given us to work on during the week.
Every day of the week. Until it was time to go home.
I remember the first time I tried to ski. I was pretty sure I didn't like it.
It was a cold day with snow and rain mixing in the uniquely Sierra Nevada season of "springter". The beginner slope didn't have a chair lift to sit on and ride up. Instead it had what we called a "pommel lift". The pommel lift was a cable that moved up the slope. And attached to the cable was a rope with a disc-like seat on it. The trick was to catch the rope, put it between your legs, let the disc catch you on the bottom, and stay on your skis as the cable pulled you up the hill.
I was already cold and wet and scared and discouraged before I had to face that contraption. When it was my turn to ride up, the lift caught me off balance and I fell into the snow. My skis tangled and I couldn't get up. I was crying and mad. And then a nice woman skied over to me and picked me up. I must have been saying something about "stupid skis" and "hate this" and "don't want to" because she made me look at her and very calmly and confidently told me that I just needed to give it another try. By the end of the day, she assured me, I would be loving it.
Sometimes it's good for a young boy to have a beautiful older woman be confident in his abilities. When she was done with her pep talk, I would have done anything she told me to, because I believed she believed I could.
I mastered the pommel lift on my next try and only let it throw me once or twice more that day. When I got to the top of the slope all I knew was that pointing my skis downhill would make me go fast and that pointing my toes together and pushing my heels out would slow me down.
And so I went down. When I felt like I was going too fast I pointed my toes and pushed my heels. When that didn't work, I bailed. Down I went in an explosion of snow and skis. Then I found my gear, put my skis back on, and started over again.
And by the end of the day I was LOVING it!
For the next 7 years we made it a tradition to have our ski week and we found every other excuse we could to get to the mountains to ski.
In January 1988 I was in the middle of my senior year of high school. We rented a condo at Squaw Valley and on the first run of the first day Uncle Eric and I took on a short and fairly straightforward black diamond run for expert skiers. Less than halfway down, I got stuck in the bottom of a mogul and when I made my hop-turn everything on my body turned.
Except my right leg below the knee.
For years I'd wondered how embarrassing it was for those skiers who had to be pulled off the mountain by the heroes in red jackets that worked for the Ski Patrol.
Now I was finding out. Grandpa took me to the ski resort clinic where I got a brace to strap onto my swollen leg.
And that was the last time I skied with my brothers. I spent the rest of the week in the condo with partially torn ligaments in my knee that would prevent me from doing much normal walking for most of my last semester of high school.
After I joined the Army I was stationed in Germany. I bought a great pair of skis and boots and skied all over Europe. It was fun, but it wasn't the same as skiing with my brothers.
This January I got to ski with my brother again. Uncle Eric and I met in Park City, Utah with our kids. They learned to ski and snowboard while he and I got to enjoy each other's company as we rode up and tore down the mountains.
Just like old times.
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3 comments:
This is a treasure. Thank you for sharing. It is fun to read your stories, as you can tell them wonderfully! Your children are blessed to have such a father.
we had a fabulous time with you guys! thanks for sharing your memories (Eric says he remembers some things differently - isn't that funny!)
love you
Hey John,
Wonderful vignette about your childhood enterprise and the skiing that it funded. I could almost imagine that I was there picking the green hulls from the sandy ground.
I'm glad you were able to reprise "the old times" with your bros on the slopes. Fantastic.
Your too-long silent friend,
Jared Sorensen
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