Pepper's Market

Published in slightly edited form (sans photos) Dec. 18, 2013
in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Last week a woman stormed up to my cash register at RN Market where I work and burst into this sentence:  "I want to thank you for saving those two buildings!  I'm on your side."  She is someone who has served this community in various capacities for decades, so her support means a lot.  But even more important were her stories about what used to be in the oldest building the City wants demolished.

     I had thought it once held Nation's Grocery.  "I never heard it called that," she said.  "It was Pepper's Market.  Mr. Pepper ran it, and Mr. Jessup ran the meat counter, I think.  I traded there.  It was a wonderful store."  When I asked a friend about my name confusion, he said "Oh, no.  Nation's Grocery was on Honolulu near the Gazette building.  They left their produce out on the sidewalk at nights, had a grill they closed down over it...."

     It turns out his grandmother also traded at Pepper's Market.  "When I was just a little boy, she would take me with her.  Mr. Pepper - his name was Al, I think - was behind the meat counter.  He was always in a white apron and big white hat, and he would entertain me with magic tricks to keep me occupied while she shopped.  He had a two-sponge trick where he would put a sponge in each of our hands, and pretend to blow the one in his hand into mine.  And I'd say 'How'd you DO that?'"  My friend also remembered that Mr. Pepper's son Steve and daughter Anna worked in the store with him.


Pepper's Market behind the Lindsay Junior High School Band,
Orange Blossom Parade, early 1960's.

Wider street view showing relation to other downtown businesses.  Lindsay's
High School band is behind the palomino.

Also called Pepper's Cash Grocery, showing 7-Up ad on north wall and
Orange Blossom Court float.  Photos courtesy of the Bastady Family, Lindsay.

     He also said that it became Beverly's Bargains sometime in the 1970's.  It was run by Beverly Chapman, wife of Lester Chapman who owned Chapman's Welding and also the orange ranch where Roosevelt Elementary was built just a couple of years ago. When I moved to Lindsay in the early 1990's, the building was still occupied by various businesses trying to make a go of it at that important corner.  But then it became vacant and boarded up, used temporarily for the cyclists' mural in honor of the Amgen Tour flying by it through the roundabout.

     This building is the one the City has used to ridicule the issue of historic preservation we have raised in the lawsuit currently pending against them.  In meetings they show photos of broken doors and missing sections of roof and say "THIS is what they want to preserve," as if we were lunatics from beyond the fringe.  I have pointed out that what they are showing makes a good case for landowner neglect, and that if they had done the survey of historic resources 20+ years ago required by the general plan, there might have been funds to help maintain and restore the more valuable places in this community's memory bank.  The real issue is that many of the community's residents are part of the history of this place, whereas the City's administrators are not.  How to get them to protect what they don't know or appear to care about is the question.

Old Pepper's Market building with Amgen mural, May 2013.
 

     My attachment to the building is to learn its role in the town's development, but my attachment to the land beneath and around it is much greater.  The soil is sandy loam, delivered by Lewis Creek a century or more ago free of charge, precious and rare in this town built mostly on Tertiary clays.  It's a perfect site for a community garden.  The two-plus bare lots on that block could be growing fresh food for the Lindsay-Strathmore Coordinating Council, or for the benefit of families in need of some extra income, plots which the organizer for the Dolores Huerta Foundation asked the City for help finding two years ago when the park plan was being finalized.

 

Empty lot next to Pepper's Market showing good soil tilth, May 2013.
 

Open ground behind Pepper's Market with good grass cover crop, May 2013.

Additional open lot half a block away, July 2013.

     The building could be used to store tools and garden supplies, hold meetings and hand out gardening information, and even to market the produce if that was the goal.  They could leave it out on the sidewalk at night and pull a grate down over the fresh lettuce and corn, melons and squash, tomatoes and peppers....  Perhaps it could become Pepper's Market once again, selling hot peppers this time.



Side of Pepper's Market with 7-Up advertising still visible, July 2013.

(Author's note:  In late Sept. 2013, California passed a new state law allowing municipalities to lower the assessed valuation on urban parcels under 3 acres for owners dedicating them to growing food for five years, for the purpose of stimulating community gardens and small-scale urban agriculture. See "Cultivating urban agriculture," Fresno Bee, Oct. 4, 2013.)
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Trudy Wischemann is a garden-variety dreamer with rural roots who can often be found with dirt under her fingernails.  You can send her your stories of Pepper's Market, Beverly's Bargains or other memories of Lindsay's places and times % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.