Train of Thought
The Potato Shed?
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Earlier this week my son, Chris, called and invited me to have lunch with him.
Seems that these days, or Tuesdays to be precise, lunch at the Apple Shed involves all you can consume BBQ and Buffalo wings along with their soup and salad bar.
This did not take much persuasion on his part.
Plus, I am finally old enough to get senior discounts. (I will never forget the utter feeling of despair when I received that first fateful piece of mail from AARP many years ago.)
While sitting at the table downing wings and salad, my mind began to wander and before you know it, I was transported back in time, trying my best to imagine this place as something other than what we have come to know and enjoy as a quaint place to install a meal.
Sitting there next to the railroad tracks for the last seventy years or so, our shed has seen quite a lot of history.
In the late thirties, the United States as well as many other countries adversely affected by the great depression, began to see signs of relief.
In the Tehachapi Valley, agriculture was booming, markets across the country needed what we grew and farmers needed seed to grow their own crops.
Having access to two major railroads that could move products in every direction on the compass put Tehachapi in the agricultural catbird seat. Jake Jacobsen and his brother Rolf needed to get not only their own crops to these markets, they also answered the needs of many other ranchers in the valley when they constructed what is now the Apple Shed in the latter part of the depression.
As I sat there looking around at this aging building, I could imagine trucks loaded with bushels and bushels of various produce pulling up to the front loading dock doors to unload.
You could almost feel the myriad of ancient wheels of heavy handcarts digging into the wooden floors as they scurried about.
Looking up I saw the specially designed roof joists that allowed for a large, open working space without the need of extra support columns, strong enough to hold back the snows of the worst winters. There is a model train running around in those joists now, a testament to our town's railroad heritage
This was a packing shed and if you look over the entry door you will see one of the original Jacobsen Produce burlap bags.
Imagine how many of thousands of these bags were loaded by hand, one after the other, into railroad cars.
At dawn, as the sun climbs into the sky over Sand Canyon, the great wooden doors would roll open to signal the start of another day.
A string of boxcars, reefers or hoppers, depending on the day's schedule, were standing ready to be loaded.
As the doors opened, a rush of crisp, cool mountain air filled the packing crew's nostrils as they began to load the cars, one hand truck load at a time. Refrigerated cars for anything perishable, hoppers were loaded with seed and grain and non-perishable produce was loaded into boxcars.
Once upon a time, fueled by a contract with the government, this shed and the hard working crew would load out 50 carloads of potatoes a day. That's a lot a French fries.
Over the span of the following half century, the packing shed would twice burn down and be rebuilt, survive the flood of 1945 and the earthquake of '52. Jake Jacobsen would become the Mayor of Tehachapi and be involved in city government.
Our junior high school bears his name. John Nunes of Nunes Ranch sold the shed in 1994, and it began its current duties as a restaurant, bakery and museum of sorts a year later.
The next time you find yourself in the Apple Shed, look around at the worn wood floors, the roof joists and the old wooden doors. Imagine the thousands of railroad cars that left here loaded with goods from our valley that found their way to markets to the east, west, north and south.
Go on a Tuesday, the wings were delightful.
