I would like to likewise honor my father's favorite peach, and my Grandfather's livelyhood from the Sutter Buttes area of the other, Northern end of the Central Valley, the Sacramento Valley, where the huge main river by comparison has not Yet been sucked completely dry by greedy farmers subsidized with way too cheap, 70% of state's entire supply, water prices.
North of Marysville up the cheap narrow 2 lane county road was my Grandfather's small edible peach orchard of Melrose peaches. My dad was expected to go to school and get good grades, be on the football team and do Herculean amounts of childwork, physical labor around the small farm. They were relatively poor, but ate well off their land and my father grew up very strong and healthy from all the pruning, horse and mule chores, and other general farm chores that city kids to this day do not have a clue about.
Long before ww2 ,for many decades, my Grandfather's family had employed one Japanese-American family who lived in a house behind the main house and where my father was invited to join the family in their daily late afternoon big wood hot tub soaks, all naked, after cleaning off before entering. I wish he could have remembered their family name, to include them in our family history and Californians family history, but Dad died at 95 suddenly last year and Mom and the family have suffered a terrible loss. He taught famously at college level and was a multiple decorated war hero , whose exploits are still "classified Secret" and even after 50 yrs , soldiers of his exceptional bravery will possibly never ever have their true heroic stories told. What a national waste !!
My Dad's sister wasn't interested in these hired farm workers and their strange hot tub soaking, but dear old Dad learned Japanese and became very close to the family, respectfully, even tho I gather the parents were typically rather racist of everybody generally,,, non-white, non-Protestant back in those old days. And then he has to go to the very front of the Pacific theatre war and fight the Japanese. It must have been hard for him, tho he was to his death extremely patriotic. He took us to San Jose's tiny Japantown many times as children to eat a meal. And the Japanese-American family had been shipped off to one of the California desert prison camps. Such an injustice.
Bank of America foreclosed on the farm when the great depression hit and without shelter or peaches, the 2 kids were given to relatives in Sf and Oakland. My Grandfather took personal blame for the G.Depression, tho it was not in the least his fault. Can you imagine the hardships?
Several years ago the last of Grandfather's delicious juicy big and beautiful Melrose peach trees died in the San Jose-Willow Glen backyard.
None of the local garden centers knew how to order another Melrose , so my busy busy Dad gave up looking. Boy scout troop leader. He gave so much to the neighbors and neighborhood over his long lifetime, now forgotten by San Jose.
So I took up the challenge for him and my appetite ! I phoned lots of State Ag.civil servants who all said,"I have been working decades in the Sacramento Valley and never seen or heard of a Melrose peach."
I called the rich and very famous UCDavis university and talked to employees in their famous plant reference library who all said, "There is no record at all of this Melrose peach every existing or even being grown in all of California."
I went online and talked to arborists and tree experts all over the United States. No luck.
No one remember the pre-canning peach days, when you ate peaches ripe and juicy and full of flavor right off the tree.
I was so lucky as we had many fruit trees in our yards front and back.
Goodbye, Melrose peach.
