- Publication: Shell Progress, the magazine of the Shell Oil Company, October 1942
- Article: “FIGS — Food for Fighting Men,” continued on page 24
- Who: “Joe” Sharmer, fig expert and orchard superintendent
- Place: Merced County, California
- Condition: Cover and page 24 from the family’s copy; page 23, where the article begins, is not included
Click a page to enlarge it.
THE COVER
Shell Progress, October 1942. The cover shows a drawing of an old wooden oil derrick and the line “Petroleum’s Progress — See Page 6.” Someone in the family wrote “Page 24” on it to mark Joe’s photograph.
PAGE 24 — THE CAPTION
“A fine tray of figs,” agree these gentlemen — and Shell Spray Oils helped make them that way. (From left to right): Norman D. Fitzgerald, son of the orchard owner; Paul Leonard, Shell’s Local Manager at Merced, and “Joe” Sharmer, fig expert and orchard Superintendent.
THE ARTICLE
The writer follows the Merced County fig crop from the orchards to the sorting sheds and on to the Planada Packers Cannery, which ran around the clock; more than 70 per cent of its figs were canned “for use by Uncle Sam’s fighting men.” He describes the work of the sorters and the canning line, and the hazards of the trade: the Mediterranean Scale, an orchard pest kept down by spraying with Shell’s oil emulsions (sometimes from aeroplanes, because of the winter mud), and rain during the drying season. He ends with the California Fig Institute, to which all the owners belonged.
Notes & context
Joe the fig man. After the canned-fruit years of the letters, Joe became a fig grower and orchard superintendent around Planada. In October 1942 he was 44. From 1949 to 1952 he served as Merced County Supervisor (see the People page).
Figs for the war. In 1942 the United States had been at war for less than a year, and much of California’s fig crop was canned or dried for the armed forces.
The Planada Packers Cannery. The cannery the article describes was in Planada, where Joe and Ruby lived; Ruby had been the town’s postmaster (The Postmaster of Planada).
Missing page. The article begins on page 23, which is not in the family’s copy. If you have another copy of this issue, please tell us.
