Here is what John remembers

I have fond memories as a teenager and young man growing up in Cupertino. We moved there from Southern California in 1958. The rural life of apricot and cherry orchards made up for the concrete jungle of the south. My mother had purchased a single family home on Colby Avenue and within a year we had a swimming pool in the back yard and became the darlings of the neighborhood. We had Hawaiian luaus for many summers. We would dig a pit in the backyard garden and into the pit would go lava rocks, banana leaf wrapped whole pig and stripped bass. Eight hours later, it was party time for adults and kids alike….swimming, eating and drinking.
Cupertino felt safe in the 50’s and 60’s. Car doors were unlocked. We didn’t need keys to get into the house…it was always open. You could walk the streets and hitchhike on Stevens Creek Blvd where people gladly gave you a lift home late at night.
My brother and I kept score at Futurama Bowl on Stevens Creek Blvd in the evenings during the week making $5 a night. $25 a week was enough to gas up and head over the hill to Santa Cruz on weekends to go fishing off the Santa Cruz Pier or walk the beach. Memories included friends, whether it was playing pool or pinball machines at valley bowling establishments, fishing and hiking on and around Stevens Creek reservoir.
During the summer months my brother and I picked apricots for $1.25 an hour at the Mariani orchards on Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road (Highway 9). After apricots came bushels of peas and by the end of summer it was pears, all in Santa Clara Valley. Between keeping score at the bowling alleys and summer jobs, my brother and I saved enough money to buy a 1957 TR-3 Triumph Roadster. We got our first loan from the Cupertino Branch Bank of America on Stevens Creek Blvd. Five Hundred dollars later we owned that car.
I was in the first graduating class at Cupertino HS. I then went on to Foothill Jr. College and San Jose State where I graduated in Chemistry. While going to college, I worked at Portal Plaza Liquors which was owned by a Japanese American whose family had to reestablish their purchase of land they lost during the relocation of Japanese Americans to camps in the 1940’s. I remember a man coming into the store one day and asked how I could work for a “Jap”. Since I was born in 1944, I haven’t formed any prejudices regarding the Japanese and wished him to take his business elsewhere. Had it not been the money I made being employed there through my college years, I might not have finished college. The diversity of the community in Cupertino helped a young man understand the meaning of America.
I now live in Los Altos Hills, but still cherish the fond memories of growing up in Cupertino and consider Cupertino a hub to points of interest in this amazing valley.