Mountain View Historical Association

The Mountain View Historical Association was established over 50 years ago and currently has 299 members. The Association is dedicated to preserving the rich heritage of Mountain View by gathering data and cooperating with other organizations to promote and publish the history of this area. Currently, we are involved in fundraising to build a Mountain View Museum at Cuesta Annex to preserve and celebrate the history of Mountain View.

The Association meets four times a year on the first Sundays in February, May, August and November at 2:00 PM. Our meetings are held in the Historic Adobe Building located at 157 Moffett Boulevard in Mountain View and are free and open to the public.

The first Sunday in August is our annual BBQ and raffle. The other quarterly meetings are a mixture of Historical Association business and guest speakers who often augment their presentations with Visuals (videos, slideshows, etc.) on a variety of topics pertaining to local history.

Mark your Calendars!

MVHA Spring Membership Meeting - Sunday April 29, 2012 at 2:00 PM. The Old Adobe Building - Moffett Blvd. & Central Expressway (Parking in the rear of Central Expressway).

Featuring: Guest speaker Tim Stanley will give his presentation about his book The Last of the Prune Pickers.

Not long before the Santa Clara Valley of California was known for silicon, the Valley was largely covered with orchards. There were orchards of pears, apricots, cherries, walnuts and the king of them all—prunes. Most of the orchards were part of small family farms, and there were thousands of them. This is the story of how those farms came into being and thrived. It is also the story of one of the last of those farms, of the farmer and of some of the young boys and girls who had the privilege of working for him.

We were among the last of the prune pickers.

Tim Stanley grew up in Saratoga and during his teens worked on one of the last fruit farms there. When he married, he and his wife moved to Los Gatos and later to Irvine. After running a construction business for thirty years, Tim is now working as a free-lance writer. He has published a local history book titled, The Last of the Prune Pickers: A Pre-Silicon Valley Story. His web site is www.2timothypublishing.com .

Mr. Stanley will give a brief overview of the book with visual aid. He will divide the presentation into two parts, the Historical Background for the orchard farms that once graced the Santa Clara Valley, and the Way of Life of the orchard farmers.

The Historical Background presentation will include a little about Mission Santa Clara agricultural operations, the Californios and cattle ranching, early American farming successes and failures, and highlights of the technology stories that transformed the Valley into “The Garden of the World.”

In the Way of Life presentation, Mr. Stanley will discuss orchard farming, market challenges and the Sunsweet story, the end of the orchard era, and some lessons learned.

Mr. Stanley has traveled a great distance to speak with us, and others who have heard him speak have found him quite entertaining. Please don’t forget that our spring meeting will be one week earlier than usual, April 29, so double check your calendars as you won’t want to miss this program. Mr. Stanley will have a few books available for sale at our meeting.

Of Plums and Prunes

Prunes are plums,I won't deny,
But not all plums are prunes.
The kinds that ferment - those are plums;
Those that resist are prunes.

Plums are picked from ladders,
From branches of the tree;
Prunes are picked up off the ground.
This differs too, you see.

Plums are to be eaten fresh;
Prunes are grown to dry.
I hope this explanation helps-
At least I had to try.

Now if you don't believe me,
With my grammar can't agree,
Mr. Webster understood these things,
And he will vouch for me.

President's Message - By Patricia Figueroa - MVHA President

Hi Everyone,

Mark your calendar! It's time for the next Quarterly Membership Meeting, which as been moved up one week, and will be held on Sunday April 29th.

I wanted to give you an update of some of the actions taken at our last Board meeting held on March 14th. The Audit Committee submitted their annual report, and I am pleased to share with you that they found everything to be in excellent order. We also established a Membership Committee to begin a review of our Membership Dues and annual membership renewal process. We want to make sure that we have in place a Membership renewal process that is easy and timely. If you have any suggestions you want to share with the Membership Committee please let me know. The Board also decided that we needed to make more of an effort to become more viable at Community Events held downtown by having a table distributing our Brochures. The Board would welcome the support of others when we do these projects so when you see a sign-up sheet from us asking for volunteers remember your one or two hours are extremely valuable to us.

Hope some of you are taking the time to checkout our Facebook page . Some slides of the 1960's were recently found and have been digitized and some of them put on our Facebook page. You would enjoy seeing how these photos make others recall so many fond memories. One photo is of the area in front of the "Menu Tree" - some said "a place before it's time" and they were probably right. My family remembers the many meals we had under "the clock" inside the Menu Tree.

See you on April 29th!

- Pat Figueroa, MVHA President

(650) 965-4783, patfig@ix.netcom.com