US City Boy Living a European Life

My earliest memories were being with Fritz and Lina and her two brothers, usually at either of Gotty’s farms, one in Yucaipa (in an area called The Dunlap) and Cherry Valley or at Hans’ cattle ranch about three miles from where Lina and Fritz lived in Calimesa.

During my youth, I spent many years in their presence and only regret that I am unable to recall more about their lives.

They spent hours and hours just talking, always in Swiss-German, or Schweitzer-Deutsch. They made no effort to accommodate my native tongue, gently helping me understand, gain confidence and gradually engage in stilted conversations.

Their personalities and their worldviews left lifelong impressions. 

They lived their lives as they would have had they been living in Switzerland. They were the most salt-of-the-earth people I’ve ever met. Hardworking. Enterprising. Industrious. Thrifty. Proud. Humble.

Of the three, only Hans had a telephone. Gotty had no running water in either of his houses on his two properties. He had no television. 

He had no refrigerator. My first taste of beer was at the age of three or four. Gotty gave me a taste of Burgermeister, a room temperature beer.

There were no pop-tops. No, he used a beer can opener and, of course, beer sprayed everywhere each time he opened one. 

To drive from his main residence in Yucaipa to his cherry farm in Cherry Valley, Gotty would have to driver by the Wanzenried farm, off of what was then US  Highway 99 (now Interstate 10). He would always stop.

One day, he stopped by with a large bear lying dead on the bed of his flatbed pick-up. Angered by the failure of the fish and game wardens to control bears that were damaging his fruit trees, Gotty had rigged up a shotgun with bait that would trigger it. The contraption bagged a massive prize.

The meat was spoiled but the bearskin, a brilliantly-sheened black, was intact; so, Fritz and Gotty unloaded it and Fritz skillfully skinned the bear and tanned the hide. The bearskin became a fixture in Gotty’s home, despite the fact even then there was a severe penalty for killing bears. (All of this was, of course, hush, hush.)

Lina would help Gotty during harvest each year. She “packed” fruit, meaning she arranged fruit of all kinds, apricots, apples, pears, peaches, and cherries, is wooden shipping boxes and crates. She would stand for hours, meticulously packing single pieces of fruit, at times in their own paper wrappers, each neatly arranged in rows in layers separated by thin cardboard sheets. At the end of the day, there were dozens of boxes of fresh fruit, ready to be shipped.

This was wholesale packing at its best in the early 1950’s.

I would have been three of four years old. My job was to separate the stems, leaves and over-ripe fruit.

At the end of each day, Gotty insisted on paying Lina. When she refused, a colorful argument in Schweitzer-Deutsch ensued. Crisp ten- and twenty-dollar bills were thrown back and forth.

I gladly accepted pay for my work, usually fifty-cent pieces and silver dollars. It was then I learned the real difference folding money and coins. 

My first exposure to all of this was when I was three or four years old. Lina would have been about 60. She continued packing fruit for at least another 10 years.

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The drive to Gotty’s farm in Cherry Valley was on a very winding, mountainous road in dry mesquite country. Rattlesnakes enjoyed sunning themselves in the roadway and there hundreds of them. One day while riding with Gotty, he stopped, killed a rattlesnake with a shovel, cut off the tail and gave it to me. It had eight rattles. 

Fritz and Lina owned a 1950 Chevrolet station wagon, they type which would eventually come to be called “woodies” by surfers. This image gives you a pretty good idea of what it looked like.  

Driving after dark was always a problem. If you look closely, you will see a brake/  tail light in the middle of the read door. The light was easily grounded; when it did, the light didn’t work.  Whenever we would drive the car to Cherry Valley to pack cherries and fruit, it would be dark long before our trip home. On the way, Lina would stop and it was my job to jump out the car and run to the rear of the car to see if the light was working. 

Each time I did, I remembered the rattlesnake with eight rattles. 

I know there were times when I said the light was working when it wasn’t, just so that we would not have to fiddle with it. 

When we drove into Los Angeles, some 70 miles away, usually to sell cured hides and fresh fruit, the day was planned so that we would be home before dark. Traffic even in the early 1950’s in Los Angeles was a nightmare. After all, two-lane, divided highways, complete with traffic signals and unrestricted access, were intended to handle the volume. Inevitably, we were delayed and drove home in the dark. Thankfully, Fritz almost always drove on these trips and knew all of the tricks to keep the taillight lit.

Occasionally, Lina, Mathilde and I packed the car with fresh fruit and set off for the day in Los Angeles to peddle fruit. Fritz did not like the sales part of raising fruit, so he stayed home. We drove into areas that are today’s ‘hood,’ areas heavily populated by minorities, mostly Hispanic and Black.

We would pull up, put a small homemade sign reading “Fresh Fruit” on the hood of the car and started selling. Mind you, we had no business licenses of any kind, although the scale we used had been certified.

At first, it was slow, so, Lina gave me small basket of fruit and I would became a door-to-door sales representative, using only a script she made me memorize. I was 5 or 6 years old, the formative years. Word of mouth did the trick and in no time, mothers with their kids were lined up. 

It was then that I found out how much we are all alike. I already knew that language did not make us different. Here I found out that cultures and skin colors are only barriers if we fail to look beyond the obvious differences.

We were really good at what we did. We sold out every time. The rate on return was sparkling, that is, until one time were busted for not having a business license. The fine was $50.00. Lina sobbed all the way home.

Over time, that business model gave way to another one. Each year, Fritz would erect a fruit stand and the entrance to the farm, which was off US Highway 99. By this time I was 7 or 8, old enough to hold poles while they were tamped, boards while they were nailed and signs while they were hung. In several hours, we had a roadside fruit stand, rustic, but very functional and very profitable.

We sold fruit they raised in their 10-acre orchard, plus whatever we helped Gotty pick on his farms. Attracted by a mostly by single sign facing westbound traffic that simply said “Fresh Fruit,” cars and trucks parked haphazardly along the highway. It was not unusual to deplete the inventory before noon, even though my grandfather attempted to keep up, furiously picking fruit while the stand was open. 

One day a California Highway patrolman stopped to issue a warning about the stand causing a traffic hazard. Lina sent him on his way with a free basket of peaches. Law enforcement never seemed to mind after that.

When we closed for the day, we had to take down the signs, which were large and bulky. If we didn’t, drivers would drive up the short gravel driveway to their home and honk their horns. To save the trouble of taking down the signs, they decided to close the gate and lock it. Even then, passersby would stop, climb the fence and come up to the house in search of fresh fruit.

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When not tending to his orchards, Fritz was a butcher. He had a quaint, European-scale commercial butcher house.

He butched live animals: beef cattle, pigs, sheep, goats and, regrettably, lambs.

My earliest memories are filled with the smell of scalding water in a tank large enough to submerge a large hog. After it had been bled out and disemboweled, we raised it with a block and tackle hooked on to a tripod, dunked the carcass, then slowly raised it, scraping off the bristly, coarse hair as we went along. 

I recall seeing small calves living is narrow stalls being readied for slaughter for veal.

The man was a master with variety of knives, each finely sharpened for its special purpose.

Butchered critters were cut and wrapped according to the customers’ instructions and then frozen. I didn’t think too much about the process until he gave me a goat to raise without explaining we would butcher it when it was grown. I vividly remember the day we slaughtered it. This splendid, vibrant animal was alive one moment, dead the next and in short order reduced and converted into small white packages, each tied off with a heavy string.

Fritz cured the hides from the cattle he butchered, a remarkable process in of itself.

Some customers wanted smoked meats. He had special seasonings he mixed to coat and roast hams; he had special blends of seasonings he mixed with other cuts of meats to make sausages. He used wood from the apple trees in the orchard to carefully smoke a variety of them. My favorite was (and is, if I can find it) Landjaeger.

Not a single instruction nor a single blend of ingredients were ever reduced to writing. Everything was from memory.

There was no wasted motion.

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Not surprisingly, our grandparents enjoyed a meat-centric, European diet. They ate mostly fruit they had dried (apples; peaches; apricots) or canned and, with the exception of lettuce, only canned vegetables.

They raised chickens for meat and eggs. The eggs to could not use or preserve (water glass), they sold.

Lina’s baking was legendary. Pies, cookies (annis), breads (zopfe and guggelophe).

They bought in bulk, made their own soap, and had their own well and filled two large water storage tanks every other week.

The found a German-owned winery near Fontana and bought basic red and white wines in gallon bottle. He enjoyed a glass of red wine with cheese lunch every day.

Fritz strongly objected to anyone eating ice cream, believing the additives caused cancer. (This was in the early 1950’s.)

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Finally, whenever you see a picture of Fritz, you will see small white patch on his nose. His explanation was that a blunt end of a tree branch had punctured it and it had never healed. He never saw a doctor; instead, he applied an ointment (he called it ‘salve’) along with a bandage and piece of white tape religiously every morning. (My guess is that it was a basal cancer cell.)

He was my hero. If he needed a bandage on his nose, so did I. I would go for weeks with one.

I was 15 when he died.

When I viewed into the open casket, for the first time I saw him without the patch.

His nose, like him, was perfect.


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