It's Summer here in Modesto (duh!) - as it is in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere - and that means one thing: summer fruit.

Peaches and nectarines are at the height of the season and Friday I savored one of the few things that makes Summer tolerable in Modesto - the unimaginably sweet taste of a tree-ripened white nectarine.

You'll find fruit and vegetable stands all around the outskirts of Modesto and surrounding towns, some stands are even on the honor system where the fruit is placed on a cart near the edge of the road, you select what you want and drop your dollars into a box.

But Friday, I drove across town to the Rodin Farms fruit stand at the corner of Claribel Avenue and Oakdale Road. I had primarily gone to buy ears of corn - I love the tender Silver Queen variety - which was selling for 6 ears for $1.00. But once I tasted the samples of the white nectarine slices near the cash register, I knew it was the nectar(ine) of the Gods.

Unlike the peach, there is no fuzzy skin to interfere with the tastebuds, the tree-ripened flesh of the fruit melts as honey melts on your tongue. At $1.25 a pound, I purchased $21.00 worth of peaches, nectarines and apricots, and 24 ears of corn at the going rate.

I pity those who have never tasted a tree-ripened nectarine or peach from California's Central Valley, specifically in the area surrounding Modesto, which are absolutely better tasting than the one's David "Mas" Masumoto and his fellow growers harvest down in Fresno, 100 miles to the south (the gauntlet is thrown down...).

The taste of the fruit got me thinking about a job I had two summers-in-a-row in 1975 and 1976 at the Tillie Lewis Foods Cannery on 9th Street in Modesto, about 1.3 miles from my home in Modesto's original barrio. My next door neighbor, Jess Ibarra, was a mechanic at the plant and had such a strong work ethic that The Modesto Bee newspaper did a story on him in the 1980's chronicling the fact that he'd never missed a day of work in the 30+ years that he'd worked there.

Since Jess had known me my entire life, when I started work there he got me one of the "cleanest" and more highly sought after jobs in my pay scale - working the "can line."

I worked by myself, about 30 feet above the other employees on the floor: fillers, seamers, clean-up, palletizers, depalletizers, sorters, can-end loaders, etc. I used to describe my job as being like watching model trains all day, the various size cans (8 oz, 16 oz, quart, gallon) would be transported by conveyer from the warehouse and would rotate around and around in the rafters like an airplane holding pattern until magnetic sensors would detect the need for more cans to be diverted to the filling machines. The fruit our plant canned were tomatoes and peaches.

But not tree ripened peaches. These were "industrial" cling peaches, necessarily tough to withstand the normally peach-bruising harvest and transport from field to processor. The peaches were yellowish-orange with no detectible fibrous texture as a tree-ripened peach has. The fuzzy skin was scorched off in a caustic lye bath. These were "uber-peaches."

So, what actually WAS my job in the can line? Well, as the cans rotated round and round, occasionally a can would get stuck and I would get a broomstick-like handle and dislodge the offending can from the logjam it had created. That was it. Just be vigilant. Don't daydream too much as the sunlight (filtering in at spots from the aging cannery) reflected off the chrome finish of the can's exterior or there'd be hell to pay as the "floor lady" banged on the metal chutes that fed the respective filling machines, demanding more cans.

One day, without warning, the power to the can line was switched off and the deafening clang of thousands of tinplate cans came to an abrupt halt.

My crew leader yelled at me from the floor to climb down. All work had stopped and it was puzzling to see everything at a standstill because the cannery worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during peak season. I was told to join the hundreds of other workers in standing along the edge of aisles in the cannery. The cannery, as I said, was old and congested with green-painted machinery jammed so tightly as to be anathema to the claustrophobic. Imagine the funky plumbing and well-worn machinery in Terry Gilliam's film, "Brazil" or the "Nebuchadnezzar" in the "Matrix" films.

We were ordered to be quiet, on our best behavior, because there was to be an important inspection shortly. I felt like a soldier waiting for a general to inspect the troops, such was the climate of seriousness. We kept the plastic color-coded "bump hats" on our heads that designated our rank, just like the military. Red was for managers, blue for mechanics, yellow for safety inspectors, white for supervisors and the rest of us - the majority - wore green hats.

Suddenly, everyone went quiet and eyes turned up the aisle as three men walked swiftly towards us. They were wearing black hats and black suits. And each had beards. Men who looked like them were familiar in Modesto - you know, the German Baptists in their austere, modest suits. But these men looked a little different as they approached. Ah, I could tell by their payes (the long sideburn-like locks of hair) that they were Hasidic Rabbis.

I wasn't sure why they were there, but I found out years later upon an inquiry, that they were there to make certain the plant was kosher. I did a seach today at the Kosher Consumer website and saw the following information:

"During the canning season or production schedule the supervising rabbi will visit every cannery and every refinery several times during the season. In the course of these inspections the rabbi may review or ask questions about the process or any changes that he observes. The rabbi will also ask about ingredients, labels and any other aspect taking place in this production facility or any co-Pak that is being done by them or for them. The rabbi will also visit Corporate headquarters where he will consult with the corporate staff on any new products, suppliers or new formulas which are being considered, and of course any kashrus issues. A food production facility, which processes kosher and non-kosher products in equipment adjacent or in close proximity to each other, may require a full time Mashgiach (kosher knowledgeable supervisor). There must be a reliable method of assuring that the food or ingredient produced at the facility did not become contaminated with any non-kosher ingredient or equipment."

The image of the Rabbis walking down the aisle is etched indelibly, almost cinematically, in my memory. I'm curious how many of California's ever shrinking number of canneries (Tillie Lewis Foods has been closed at least 20 years) maintain kosher standards. I'll do some research and update this blog as I find out.

Until then, however, the men with black hats, black suits and beards you see in Modesto will probably be German Baptists - or maybe a Country and Western band.

Posted by: Adrian / 3:18 PM
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