Word: avocados
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Thirty years ago only the rich could afford the strange meaty taste of avocado pears. Now avocados cost around a dime apiece instead of $5. West Indian avocados are grown in Florida, and some 13,000,000 pounds were imported last season from Cuba (certain spectacular avocados weigh two pounds apiece). But most avocados eaten in the U. S. come from California. Californians look down their noses at the West Indian article; California avocados are Guatemalan or Mexican or a cross beween the two. The Fuerte, a hybrid, called "the sturdy" because it shivered through the Big Freeze...
...young Californian named Carl Schmidt discovered the Fuerte in the patio of Señor Alejandro LeBlanc in Atlixco, Mexico. He sent a few buds back home, the middle classes of the U. S. began to hanker after avocados, and in 1934-35 there was a bumper crop of 20,000,000 pounds which brought in $600,000 to California avocado growers. But last year there was another Big Freeze, which went hard with avocados. Ordinarily, the avocado harvest lasts through the summer, but by last week this season's harvest was over...
This week avocado growers had nothing much to do. Combining sentiment with institutional advertising in good California fashion, 50 of them will start off on a 16-day pilgrimage promoted by the California Avocado Association, which carefully labels itself "a Cultural (non-marketing) Society." The pilgrims will go by train (price of upper berth: $205) to see Señor LeBlanc's parent avocado tree in Atlixco. There, on Easter, they will gather round the tree and listen to numerous complimentary speeches from U. S. Ambassador Josephus Daniels and Mexican dignitaries. They will present a gold medal...
...Post-Surrealism or New Classicism. As an example of his new school's work he presented his own canvas entitled Genesis. Similar to fresco painting in technique, it showed a young lady's rear, her navel reflected in a mirror, a rising sun, an egg, half an avocado pear. Attempting to explain the difference between this and old style Surrealism, Artist Lorser Feitelson wrote...
...Mexican products, which provide him with all he needs, a peso has the buying power of a pre-inflation dollar. Oranges cost three centavos (less than one penny). Avocado pears cost the same. The staples, black beans and pink rice, cost usually 20 centavos a kilo, which is more than two pounds. That's 2½? a pound. And if you've eaten black bean paste with chili sauce and Mexican pink rice, you know you don't have to feel sorry for anyone who makes it his daily fare...