Merced

In Europe, the man who owned land was always looked up to, so, with visions of grandeur, in 1925 Václav decided to give up his machinist work and become a farmer. Investing what savings they had, plus a loan from Aunt Kubele, Mom and Pop bought a ten-acre fig orchard in Merced, a town in the San Joaquin Valley about 125 miles southeast of San Francisco with a population of around 7,000. (For comparison, today it is over 85,000).

Pop probably heard that a man around the corner from them on Ellsworth Street, a Mr. Vídak, had a farm for sale, so he went for it. A friend, Mr. Skov of Livingston, had a truck and helped the family move.

The farm (which was really a fig orchard) was three and a half miles north of Merced, a half-mile off Snelling Highway, with only one neighbor family, the Reineros, living across the road. On their property, the Reineros had a vineyard and also dairy cows. In the center of our property there was a two-bedroom wood-frame house with living room, dining room, eating porch off the kitchen and a bathroom. Across the front of the house was a wooden-floored porch. The front door opened into the living room with one bedroom just to the right (Mom and Pop's room). Behind the bedroom was the dining room and behind the living room was the kitchen. Actually one door from the living room went to the dining room, and a swinging door was between the living room and kitchen. As little ones, we girls would chase each other in a circle through these three rooms.

There was an eating porch to the left of the kitchen, just large enough for a table with bench behind it where we three girls sat, a chair at the far end for Lumir, and two chairs on the kitchen side for Pop and Mom. Our tablecloth was oilcloth, which held up very well for a few years. Toward the back of the house another door led to a hall. On the right was a large bedroom where we girls slept. The two outside walls had sliding glass windows about four feet off the floor with screens on the outside. While the folks had a nice bedroom set in their room, we girls just had a double bed and a cot with a couple of dressers for our clothes. Across the hall was the bathroom with washbasin, toilet and a bathtub on feet. Beyond the bathroom was a small porch where the icebox was kept. I think the broom and mops plus bucket were stored there, also.

When we first moved to the farm, we used kerosene lamps for lighting, a kerosene stove for cooking in summer, and a wood stove for cooking and heat in winter. After a couple of years, PG&E extended an electric line to the property and the house was wired for electric lighting. It was many years later before Mom got an electric stove.

At some time, Pop put in a cellar with outside entrance for storing wine, canned fruit and such. A cesspool took care of waste, but there was also an outhouse beyond the tank house. Pop made the most use of this facility, which was equipped with an old Sears Roebuck calendar for paper supply. Behind the house was the tank house, which was a two-story structure with a water tank on top. Water came from a well and was pumped into the tank by the windmill, which was adjacent to the tank house. Later an electric pump was installed in case the wind didn’t put enough water into the tank. The second floor of this building was Lumir's room. The ground floor had storage space and washtubs where Mom did the laundry, having to heat water in buckets over a kerosene stove. It is here where Pop would make his "moonshine" whenever his supply ran low. He used wheat or rice, whichever was cheapest to buy.

As a rule, Pop didn't drink much hard liquor, but he would use a teaspoon of whiskey plus some honey in his evening coffee and then smoke one cigarette, which usually was one he rolled himself. He did drink wine with lunch and dinner. In the early years, Mom usually drank just coffee, but later the doctor told her it would help her relax if she had a glass of wine with dinner at which time she learned to drink it. Sometimes Pop would try making his own wine from grapes purchased from Reineros or he would buy wine from them. In later years, when cars were more reliable, he journeyed to Gilroy and purchased bulk wine. When Lumie got his driver’s license, he became the designated driver even though he disliked spending the day in that way.

Along the side of the house there was a grape arbor, about 10 feet wide with Concord grape vines growing over it. Mom used the grapes for jelly making, and we children used the arbor shade for a play area. There was another arbor about 4 feet wide, going from the back of the house to the tank house, which provided good shade for walking between the two structures. The grapes here were Thompson seedless for eating.

A barbwire fence surrounded the property, and in the southeast corner there were two acres of almonds. In front of the house Mom had her flower garden and on the side of the house was the vegetable garden, which was a real necessity. We had to pull weeds, cut dead flowers and move the hose for irrigating. We also had to feed the chickens, pick figs and almonds during harvest season, and do whatever else my father would find for us to do.

The orchard required a lot of work on my father's part. In the winter he pruned the trees and we children had to stack the brush for burning. At first Pop had a horse for pulling a plow for making irrigation ditches, a cultivator, or a sled to bring in the boxes of figs we had picked. Later he bought a tractor to replace the horse. The trees had to be irrigated two or three times during the summer. This meant that as the water was pumped from the well, it was directed where needed. Pop and Lumie would be out there with shovels to manage the water's flow. It was hard work shoveling the dirt to keep the water in the ditches. Then just before the figs got ripe, Pop had to cultivate to smooth out the ground for easier picking. The harvest of the figs in late August was a big job. How we hated it! The figs would ripen and then dry a bit on the trees before they fell. When there were quite a few on the ground, Pop would get us out there with buckets and boxes, and we would get to work. I don't remember how he determined how many boxes each of us had to pick, but he told us how many boxes that would be. Sometimes we would stay together under one tree so we could talk, but other times we would spread farther apart. We soon learned our backs would hurt if we bent over too much, so most of the time we would be on our knees. Since the ground was hard and rough, this wasn't all that comfortable and for a change, we would switch to a squat. Sitting didn't work very well as we couldn't move around easily from that position. Helen was fastest and could get her quota done early, after which she sat in the shade of a tree and read, but the rest of us weren't that ambitious and did a lot of daydreaming. If we didn't get our quotas picked, we couldn't go swimming. One of Pop's expressions, which I remember him saying in English only, was "business before pleasure."

After the figs were picked, they had to be put on trays and placed in a "smoke house" where sulfur was burned to bleach them and kill insects. Next they were dried in the sun, and then Mom had to sort them to remove undesirable ones, such as those the birds had sampled. For this work, Pop set up a sorting table in the garage, so at least she could work in the shade. As I recall, this process went on from mid-August to mid-September. At the end, Pop would take all the sacks to a packer in town and hope he would get a good price. This source of income was small at best.

At this time we weren't conscious of what the roughness of the figs would do to our hands, but when I worked for Northrop and had to be fingerprinted for a security secret clearance, the officer had a terrible time getting a clear print of my thumbs. I reflected that the fig picking must have been abrasive and wore down the prints.

Because the almonds weren't ready for harvesting until after school was in session, we did that work after school and on weekends. After putting canvas tarps on the ground, Pop and Lumie shook the trees and with sticks knocked off the ones that hadn't fallen. We children would pick the almonds, put them into buckets and then transfer them to boxes. Later we would have to hull them and spread the nuts on trays to dry in the sun to prevent mildew.

It only took one harvest for my father to find out he wasn't going to support his family on the income, so he looked for other things to do. In desperation, he borrowed money and bought a Blue Ribbon business, going from door to door trying to sell his spices, coffee and tea. Our automobile was an old Ford touring car that Pop had purchased in San Francisco. He was not much of a businessman, had a soft heart, and had more money on the books owed to him than he had in his pocket. The savior was the opening of the Yosemite Portland Cement Plant, about one-and-a-half miles from the farm, in about 1927. First Pop was hired to help build the plant and then got the job of blacksmith-machinist and had steady work until he quit in 1941. At work he went by the nickname "Jim."

During the early years on the farm, keeping the wolf from the door was a real struggle. Fortunately, we grew our own vegetables and raised chickens for eating and for their eggs, so we never went hungry. There was a time when we had a cow, but this was not worthwhile, as we had to buy food for it. The Reineros, across the road, had several cows and thereafter we bought milk from them. To keep milk fresh and other foods cold, we had a wooden icebox on the back porch. On Saturdays, when we went to town to shop, the last stop was at the ice plant where we purchased a large block of ice.

Mom made jelly from the Concord grapes as well as from berries and pomegranates. (There were four or five pomegranate trees as well as a few French prune trees behind the tank house.) She also canned a lot of fruit for use in the winter. These were depression years, and Mom was very proud that we were able to take care of ourselves without relying on welfare.

When we went to Reineros for the milk, we took over clean, quart bottles for use the next day. The bottles were of glass shaped like a bowling pin with a large base and smaller neck. After the milk sat a while and the cream rose to the top, Mom skimmed off the cream, which she used for making butter. In the summer, on special occasions, we would make ice cream. This meant buying enough ice when we were in town and turning the crank on the old ice cream maker for what seemed like an hour or more. How we did enjoy that treat!

Our traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were roast goose, dumplings and sauerkraut. Dessert was a stollen, which we called "vánočka". For years we raised our own geese and Mom would have to make a special, food made of flour and lard and shaped into a roll the size of a little finger, hold the goose and make it swallow this in order to be fat enough for Pop's taste.

On the subject of food, I must comment about our bacon. We would buy it by the slab and have to do our own slicing. For lunch, Pop often cut off a hunk of the raw bacon and would eat it with French or rye bread along with a glass of wine.

We ate all our meals together. Our breakfasts were mush (oatmeal or Cream of Wheat), cold cereal, or bacon, eggs and toast; sometimes pancakes. Lunch was a sandwich (usually peanut butter and jelly or just jelly from Mom’s homemade supply) and milk plus fruit. For dinner we had homemade soup or a salad plus meat, vegetable and potatoes, dumplings or noodles. We probably had cookies for dessert. Mom made all her own noodles by rolling the dough thin, cutting it in strips and letting it dry. On weekends. we had dessert of cake, pie, pudding or jello. When Mom cut the cake or pie, we children would yell "first choice," "second choice." Ordinarily Pop didn't bother with dessert, but if he became annoyed with our bickering, all he had to do was comment he would want some, too, and we knew enough to keep quiet so we would get a larger portion.

I don't remember what our table service was when we were on the farm, but I imagine we used what people gave us or what Mom bought on sale; nothing fancy. In later years when Bill’s folks visited for a weekend, they brought Mom a set of stemmed glassware. For the folk’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, we children pooled our money and bought them a set of William Rogers silver-plated silverware, service for 12. When Sam and Babe were stationed in Japan, Mom sent them money for a set of Noritake china, so by the time the folks were in Midpines, Mom was well equipped to set a nice table.

One treat we had during the summer months was when Mr. Hoar, the "meat man," would make his rounds. He drove a truck that was modified so he could sell cold meat to the farmers. We knew which day of the week he would be around and then wait for him as he also had a tray of glazed doughnuts, which he sold at two for 5¢. This was during the years when Pop's income was steady and Mom felt she could afford to treat us. She would buy just enough meat for a couple of meals as she knew she would get more for her money in town on Saturday.

Pop had a sister-in-law, Jármila, living in Czechoslovakia, and when she sent us a package, we children would have to write our “thank you” in Czech. This was supervised by Pop, and we had to write and rewrite until the letter was perfect. While on the subject of Jármila, one year she sent a package of dried mushrooms and wrote that Mom should sort them carefully. It was a pleasant surprise to find she had hidden among them four gold and garnet rings, one for each of us. Garnet is a gem that is mined extensively in Czechoslovakia, and I still treasure my garnet ring. Christmas ornaments which Jármila sent are mentioned in a later chapter.

I must comment about our health. When we lived in San Francisco, if we didn't have one of the childhood diseases, we had a cold or something. On the farm our health improved and the only time we had need for a doctor was when Edgar Walker threw a parachute, (a bandana with corners tied to a nut) accidentally hitting Helen, making quite a gash on her forehead. Pop had to leave work and take her to town where the doctor sewed it together with a few stitches. We didn't know anything about preventive dentistry and only went to the dentist when we had a problem. Consequently, as adults, we all have had to have extensive dental work done

One year we took a trip to Los Angeles to visit the Kubeles (Mom’s sister—our aunt and uncle). We all piled in the old Ford along with baggage and food. At mealtime, we would stop under a tree along the road and have our picnic. Those were the days when tires had tubes in them and often went flat. I don't know how many times we stopped enroute to make repairs, but it did make for an extensive trip. While Pop was fixing the tire, we children played on the side of the road. Fortunately, traffic was a lot lighter then. I'm sure it took more than a day to get there, and we probably slept in the car at a local park. Lumie also recalls that we went to San Francisco to visit a few times, but those trips I don't remember.

During our growing up years, as a family we never had vacations away from home, other than the above-mentioned trips. When I was in high school, I was allowed to go to Alhambra by bus to spend a week with Eliška, which was quite an experience for me. Eliška was ten years older than I, and had just fallen in love with Stanley. She probably didn't appreciate having a younger cousin to entertain, but I don't recall any ill feeling. Her half-sister, Hermina, worked as a domestic and wasn't around much.

During the summers of our high school years, we would find what work we could. One of the jobs available to us was cutting fruit at a cannery or drying shed. We would be paid according to how much we cut, and although the work was hard, we persevered and earned enough to buy school clothes.

During World War II, when Pop took a job with the government on Mare Island, near Vallejo, Lumie and Jyme lived on the farm for the year 1942. In 1943, when Lumie had to go into the Army, Jyme moved in with her mother and the farm was rented out. After the war, Lumie and Jyme lived there from 1945 until September 1948 when they moved to their house in town, at which time the farm was sold.

By this time the folks were retired and living in Midpines, which is covered in another section.

MERCED, CALIFORNIA