LEMON CRATES HAVE APPEAL NEW MUSEUM EXHIBIT EXAMINES A BYGONE ERA IN AGRICULTURE HISTORY.Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer It's been decades since the sack-carrying Santa or the rosy-cheeked Paula advertised the Limoneira Co.'s fresh, sunny lemons to East Coast buyers. The colorful fruit labels, featuring lush pinup pin·up n. 1. a. A picture, especially of a sexually attractive person, that is displayed on a wall. b. A person considered a suitable model for such a picture. 2. girls and idyllic nature scenes, are now confined to frames on a wall of the 1919 Santa Paula Santa Paula (săn`tə pôl`ə), city (1990 pop. 25,062), Ventura co., S Calif., on the Santa Clara River in a fertile valley that yields citrus fruits, avocados, vegetables, flowers, nursery products, and walnuts; laid out 1875, inc. packing house A packing house is a facility where fruit is received and processed prior to distribution to market. Bulk fruit (such as apples, oranges, pears, and the like) is delivered to the plant via trucks or wagons, where it is dumped into receiving bins and sorted for quality and . But the tart smell of lemons still tinges the air, and the thud 1. thud - Yet another metasyntactic variable (see foo). It is reported that at CMU from the mid-1970s the canonical series of these was "foo", "bar", "thud", "blat". 2. thud - Rare term for the hash character, "#" (ASCII 35). See ASCII for other synonyms. of fruit dropping into boxes still echoes through the wood packing house - one of a handful left from Ventura County's citrus-raising heyday. ``You step back in time to a quite different place when you are there,'' said Judith Triem, who wrote a history of the company for its centennial. Beginning today, the Ventura County Museum of History and Art will celebrate that different time and place through ``The Art of Agriculture.'' The exhibit, with runs through May, features packing-house labels from the 1890s through 1940s, a time when Limoneira Co. workers picked the fruit and packaged it by hand into crates bearing the fanciful labels. The labels included eye-catching, signature drawings like Limoneira's Santa or its mythical Paula. The sultry sul·try adj. sul·tri·er, sul·tri·est 1. a. Very humid and hot: sultry July weather. b. Extremely hot; torrid: the sultry sands of the desert. Ventura Maid and her cherry red lips became affiliated with the Ventura County Lemons packed at Ventura Pacific Company in Montalvo. More than a pitch for the citrus, pears and celery celery, biennial plant (Apium graveolens) of the family Umbelliferae (parsley family), of wide distribution in the wild state throughout the north temperate Old World and much cultivated also in America. sold, the labels indicated the quality of the fruit. The fan-waving Paula, with her low slung slung v. Past tense and past participle of sling1. slung Verb the past of sling1 slung sling red dress and matching rosy cheeks, signaled customers that the lemons crowding the crate were second best to the Limoneira's Santas. Crates sometimes stacked six-feet high by fruit sellers and buyers created a wall of advertisements in Chicago and New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of markets, said Anne Graumlich, curator at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. ``It was an art form,'' Graumlich said. ``We don't do it anymore; now we advertise on television. In those days, there was no television and few color magazine This article is about a type of theater technology. For other uses, see magazine (disambiguation). A color magazine is a fixture attached to a follow spot that places different color filters in the path of the beam. ads.'' The labels, about the size of a standard sheet of paper pasted on wooden crates by hand, advertised not only Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, produce but also a fantasy region and its sunny lifestyle. ``The labels tried to enhance the company's image and romanticize ro·man·ti·cize v. ro·man·ti·cized, ro·man·ti·ciz·ing, ro·man·ti·ciz·es v.tr. To view or interpret romantically; make romantic. v.intr. To think in a romantic way. it,'' historian Triem said. ``Whether it was that way for the farm workers, I'm not so sure.'' Life for workers at Limoneira may not have matched the sunny scenes depicted on early labels, but like them, it offered promise, Triem said. Especially for immigrants who had fewer opportunities, Triem said. Single Japanese, Mexican and Southerners who worked the groves lived in segregated dormitories at ``the ranch,'' as Limoneira was called. Families of workers lived in company houses. Sorting lemons was done by hand instead of by computerized machines that do the job today. For decades, Triem said, the ranch offered a vibrant and rich communal life where neighbors gathered at company-owned houses to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. But the world in which groves stretched from Ventura to Riverside counties and dancing fruit and robust children smiled from fruit crates was changing. ``There were supermarkets. And people no longer cared about which brand they chose. People wanted to pay less,'' Graumlich explained. ``We went from using wooden crates to cardboard boxes,'' Graumlich said. By the 1950s, the colorful labels - and some of the packing houses - all but disappeared. Thomas Gonzalez, an assistant manager whose family has worked at Limoneira since the 1960s, said that even after the heyday of Ventura County citrus, life at ``the ranch'' remained appealing. ``It was a good life, nice and quiet on the ranch,'' said Gonzalez, his voice drowned by the hum of conveyer belts moving fruit. ``All seven sisters and my mom worked at the packing house,'' he said. ``My dad and my four brothers worked in the fields.'' Today, the Craftsman-style dormitory that once housed Limoneira's single workers now doubles as an office. A downstairs bowling alley has long since been closed. Only a single pin remains - encased en·case tr.v. en·cased, en·cas·ing, en·cas·es To enclose in or as if in a case. en·case  ment n. in a glass display case against the wall of what was the workers' social center. And leftover labels not tucked away in patent office files or forgotten in bottom drawers now decorate employees' kitchens or packing house owners walls, in homage to Ventura County's history. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: Packaging labels at the Limoneira plant signify various grades of lemons. Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News |
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