Where have all the Fruit Trees gone?

When I think of Marin, I think of a Marin before I was born. A time when Marin was almost back woods, known for its dairy farms and for being a thoroughfare for the railroad bringing coastal lumber to a booming San Francisco.

It is every generation's prerogative to bemoan the loss of its familiar past and idealize "how it used to be when I was a kid....". I listened acutely to stories of my father's youthful days in San Anselmo, and even though things had definitely changed, there were vestiges of the past kept alive on the street where my grandparents lived and I was absolutely aware of my luck to be living some of what my father had always taken for granted.

My grandparents built 4 modest houses on a San Anselmo cul de sac in the 30's and my great uncle built 2 others. That street is actually known on town parcel maps as the Lavaroni plot. No fences separated the properties. Children and their canine companions roamed the yards freely, playing long games of hide and seek or tag late into the evenings, and helped themselves liberally to summertime snacks of ripe fruit bursting forth from trees planted in whichever yard they happened to be traipsing through at the time. Women hung laundry to dry in the sun and popped in and out of back doors to swap recipes and neighborhood gossip.

These were the days when families set a stake in the ground, built a home and raised a family in a house in which they expected to live and die. Because whole lifetimes were to be lived in the same house, a very personal and intimate relationship resulted between these homesteads and their occupants. Greenhouses were constructed, vegetable gardens planned out and fruit trees planted for all the holiday pies to be baked for years to come. Rose bushes were tended lovingly to provide blossoms and sweet garden scent. There was no thought of trading up. No aspirations for "bigger and better". The land, however small the plot, was a source of sustenance, not a perfectly coiffed object designed to display status.

Two of the things that "sold" me on my own home in Novato were the 30 year old Peach and Apple trees in the back yard. They reminded me of the trees in yards on Hampton Avenue. THIS was a proper home. One in which I could raise my family with old fashioned values. We anticipate the developing fruit every Summer and Fall, watching the buds turn to flowers which wilt away only to reveal the nub that will grow into a the tasty seasonal gift. We gorge ourselves on fruit freshly picked, baked into cobblers or folded into ice cream. There is always more than we can ever consume from just these two wise old trees and neighbors know they are welcome to wander into our yard to help themselves to our bounty, whether we are home or not, as if no fences separate us.

If you are lucky enough to have an old fruit tree on your property, I implore you to take care of it; love it and it will reward you as it has undoubtedly rewarded past wardens of the land on which it lives. Doing so, not only honors the original planter, but bonds you to this precious land and keeps the memories of Marin's simple past very much alive.