Wednesday, April 6, 2005
By AFSHA BAWANY
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
PLACENTIA – There were the days when the only thing Alfred Aguirre, then 14, could see in Placentia were miles and miles of oranges.
For three or four summers, the now-84-year-old Aguirre battled sweltering heat, climbed a 25-foot ladder and picked Valencia oranges. His hands became rough and scratchy, but he gained muscle strength and energy that would later help while he served in World War II.
"It was a lot of fun, running up and down the ladder," Aguirre recalled. "I really enjoyed it. I thought I had accomplished something."
The former city councilman's memories of working in the booming citrus industry, and those of other pioneers, will be retold in a Readers Theater presentation tonight in Placentia's E.T. Powell Building.
Through a $5,000 grant from the California Stories Fund, Cal State Fullerton's Center for Oral and Public History center conducted 21 interviews with former packinghouse workers, pickers in the fields, growers, and anyone who lived during the farming era to create the history project titled "Packed Up, Squeezed Out: The Citrus Industry in Placentia."
Thirteen readers will be the voices of workers and immigrants who experienced the end of the packinghouse age and the dawn of the housing boom, 1945-1960.
Two of Placentia's lastpackinghouses, both on Santa Fe Avenue, will come down this spring – as TOD Properties LLC prepares for the construction of 51 single-family homes.
"We wanted to preserve the orange packinghouses story," said Kathleen Frazee, the Cal State center's administrative assistant coordinator and a Placentia resident.
In 1880, Richard Gilman planted the first commercial Valencia orange grove. And in 1910, the community's largest packinghouse, Placentia Mutual Orange Association, was built.
The record year for orange shipments was 1953, when 4,200 train-car loads were shipped across the country.
After World War II, veterans and their young families settling in Southern California needed homes. So the citrus orchards and vegetable fields gave way to subdivisions. Packinghouses were either closed or used for other business.
El Dorado High School alumnus (1996) and Los Angeles screenwriter Joey Aucoin sifted through 30 pages of interview transcripts to create a script for the reading, which will be acted out in three parts.
"It humbles your senses to know where you came from," said Aucoin, 27. "All of these people left traces in the city."
In the first act, readers will chronicle life through the eyes of the Anglo-American perspective. The second act is told through a Hispanic- American's perspective. And the third act will combine both views.
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