Oh my, showing my age

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My Dad was a friend of Buffalo Bob Smith and I got to sit in the Peanut Gallery several times one time in the Tent and several times in the Club House.When my DW was growing up her next door neighbor was  Capitan Kangaroo.     
 
Market Farms:

This may be a tad off subject...maybe not.

  In the 1960's I lived in the Vancouver BC area, in a large suburban area..Burnaby.

  Once a week an old Model T truck would cruise the neighborhood. The driver was an old  Chinese gentleman ( we called him the China-man). The truck was loaded with a huge assortment of fresh vegetables. We could hear him coming, the typical Model T horn in action... neighbors would rush out and stop him.

  It so happened that Vancouver had a fairly large Chinese population, with a famous Chinatown in the downtown area. It still exists.
  In the Southern part of the city there were very large fields of very fertile lands. Hardly any machinery was used... dozens, maybe hundreds of people, with hats on their heads, would tend to the fields for the season. Sowing, planting, weeding, thinning, harvesting..the usual garden stuff....all by hand and sore backs. I doubt that they used pesticides, probably picked the bugs by hand.

This lasted for many years. Alas, all the property (I think) is now residential and industrial property. I haven't been there for about 25 years.
 
carson said:
Market Farms:

This may be a tad off subject...maybe not.

  In the 1960's I lived in the Vancouver BC area, in a large suburban area..Burnaby.

  Once a week an old Model T truck would cruise the neighborhood. The driver was an old  Chinese gentleman ( we called him the China-man). The truck was loaded with a huge assortment of fresh vegetables. We could hear him coming, the typical Model T horn in action... neighbors would rush out and stop him.

  It so happened that Vancouver had a fairly large Chinese population, with a famous Chinatown in the downtown area. It still exists.
  In the Southern part of the city there were very large fields of very fertile lands. Hardly any machinery was used... dozens, maybe hundreds of people, with hats on their heads, would tend to the fields for the season. Sowing, planting, weeding, thinning, harvesting..the usual garden stuff....all by hand and sore backs. I doubt that they used pesticides, probably picked the bugs by hand.

This lasted for many years. Alas, all the property (I think) is now residential and industrial property. I haven't been there for about 25 years.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing that. I could actually see that. Neat
 
You just triggered a memory, Carson.  We had three grocery stores in the Coalinga oil patch when I was growing up: one owned by a classmate of my folks and two owned by Chinese families.  One of the Chinese-owned stores sent out a converted flatbed truck twice per week, driven by "Ben".  The housewives would go out and select fresh produce and whatever else they needed from his assortment when he stopped in the middle of an intersection and opened the cabinets.  He always had a treat on hand for us kids who tagged along.

Margi
 
Lived in SE Oklahoma until I was 6.  Grandmother make butter for the families.  Can remember pumping that handle on the churn for what seems like hours.  When it was done got to drink fresh buttermilk.  The thought of drinking buttermilk now days is a real turn off.

Bill Dane    99  country coach Allure
 
Carson, we live not  far from there. South Vancouver and south Burnaby are all subdivisions and industrial parks. I remember the Chinese market gardeners too. I also remember picking huckleberries and blue berries on Lulu Island. The only open land left now is the cranberry bogs.
 
Thanks for that info, Roy. My family and I lived on Lulu Island for many years, starting in 1952.
  I remember the Blueberry farms well; also the Peat bogs on Westminster Highway. They were harvesting a lot of peat in those days. That's all over with now and probably also built up, was really marshy in that area.

I was there when Highway  99 was built as well as the tunnel. The highway is actually floating on sawdust, as I remember.

  My father had a small chicken farm on Blundell road #859,which is now all condos. A good friend then was Roy Mauch...that's not you, is it? I left around 1955 and joined the RCAF...on my way to my adult life. Here I am now...a geezer...LOL.

Thanks again.    Carson
 
Mike - I was 10 when we were there.  Lived at Grant Heights which had been a kamakazi air base.  Glad I was old enough to remember it because it was interesting, like attending the first international Girl Scout Day after the war.  The Boy Scouts also had their first post-war International Jamboree while we were there.

ArdraF
 
ArdraF said:
Mike - I was 10 when we were there.  Lived at Grant Heights which had been a kamakazi air base.  Glad I was old enough to remember it because it was interesting, like attending the first international Girl Scout Day after the war.  The Boy Scouts also had their first post-war International Jamboree while we were there.
Click to expand...

Where were Grant Heights??  I was familiar with most of the areas around Tokyo as we were out the Ome line from Tachikawa and the radar I had covered from there out to sea quite a ways.  I used several of the water towers and tall buildings to check the accuracy of the target range information.  This was in late '56 and some of '57.
 
Where were Grant Heights??
Click to expand...

I "think" it was north of Tokyo.  The 1st Cav was down the road from us but I can't remember the name of their base name right now. Maybe it was even gone by the time you were there....  I'm talking 1949-1950 before the Korean War.

ArdraF
 
denmarc said:
You mean right after the 11:00 news, right?  Then, it was watching the flag and listening to the Star Spangled Banner just afterwards.
Click to expand...

I can remember that.  There wasn't much on the air when I was little. TV caught on quickly, so it didn't last long.
 
Jim - Just for the heck of it I googled Grant Heights Japan and all kinds of stuff came up.  I went to sixth grade at the Narimasu Elementary School.  The 1st Cav was at Camp Drake I think.  I'll have to spend more time looking at some of the subjects.

One entry: "Grant Heights was a US Military housing complex located in Nerima-ku, the northwestern of the 23 districts of Tokyo City. It served personnel assigned to numerous posts and bases in the area. The land had formerly been an Imperial Army Air Force station. 

Built in the late-1940?s and operated by the US Army military services unil its closing in the late-1960?s, "Grant Heights Theater" was basically a two-storey prefab rectangular box with a partially glassed-in one-storey lobby facing an adequate parking area. Apart from the theater?s name and a decorative false facade above the lobby, the building was plain."

I assume the theater he's described is the one in which we kids spent many Saturday mornings seeing the latest westerns and such.  We also sold our comic books outside the Commisary when we were finished with them.  That gave us the money to buy more from the other kids.

ArdraF
 
Ardra,

Thanks, usually I hit Google for any question but for some reason never even thought about it.  From where I was located Camp Drake was below the radar horizon so I was never sure where it was for sure.  Now Tachikawa, Yakota, Fussa, I know as we were based out of Yakota/Showa, drew our money, rations, etc., from Yakota and used the base  medical as well but lived out in the country near the guns.

I tried to find the little village we were near this morning but memory fades as to what the name was and just exactly where it was/is.

Ah, history!    :)
 
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