Many people make fun of Iowa farmers. I’m not sure why, since those hard working folks are responsible for producing the amazing foods we eat every day. But after driving through California I was reminded that there are lots more farmers than movie stars in that state!
The drive from Las Vegas into Southern California is a desert filled with…not much. And the haze we noticed was just the beginning of what turned out to be a trip filled with smoke from the awful forest fires that seemed to be popping up everywhere out West. (More about that later.)
But THIS sign brought back some amazing memories for me. Memories from sixty years ago to be exact!
When I was a little girl, our family piled into our car and we headed West, bound for California on a road trip I remember to this day. This was long before Interstate highways and smartphones. (Heck, in those days we only called our relatives in California on the weekends when telephone rates were cheaper. And we only talked for a minute to keep our phone bill low.)
Two lane highways and tiny Mom and Pop motels were fixtures all across America, and my brother Tom and I spent many nights splashing in small motel swimming pools after a day of tedious driving. (That evening swim was our parent’s way of rewarding us for not killing each other in the back seat!)
Someday I’ll share stories and old photos of some of those wonderful days. But for now I’ll tell you how that California Inspection sign jogged my memory…and made me laugh!
One day we were traveling from Arizona into California.
Mom had bought a bag of oranges to eat along the way. (We used to have picnic lunches at some of the roadside stops on our trip.) When the inspector asked if we had any fruit to declare Mom quickly and honestly told him about the oranges we had bought for our lunch. The inspector informed us we could not bring those oranges into California. Mom was shocked, and highly insulted by that rule. So she ordered Dad to pull over on the Arizona side of the sign and we proceeded to eat all those oranges right there on the spot! That still makes me laugh to this day since my mom was the least likely person EVER to question an authority figure. But she wasn’t about to waste those oranges either!
Oh…those precious memories…
And back then? No air conditioning in our car! We just rolled down the windows and let that oven-hot air smack our faces!
Fast forward sixty years, and I was certainly glad for air conditioning as we passed through Baker this time. Just check out the huge thermometer in town. It was a balmy 108 degrees that day. No wonder Baker is known as the gateway to Death Valley!
The fruit trees and the acres of nut bearing trees seem to stretch for miles these days. Even though I knew statistically that California leads the country in several farming categories it was still amazing to see those endless groves of trees that stretched on forever!
I began to notice signs for a company called the California Fruit Depot, and when I saw the exit I asked Peepaw to make a stop. The well-placed signs led us several miles off of the freeway, through even more endless groves of fruit and nut trees. Luckily they were still open when we arrived.
What amazing products they offered!
I bought some sun dried tomatoes, and the plump dates were delicious. My favorite item? Walnut stuffed dates!
I could have spent an hour, browsing and tasting and asking questions about the amazing place…but Peepaw was itching to get back on the road. So I grabbed a brochure and we headed back to the freeway.
It was a great stop on our road trip and the memories of Mom and her bag of oranges warmed my heart even more than the temperature on that hot day in the desert…
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