Korean War Veteran Bobby Shelton Makes Strawberry Flag’S Gardens Grow Part 1 of 2

StrawberryVOLUME I — HARVEST — ISSUE 6 — NO VEMGazetteBER 2010 * * * * Serving the 300,000 veterans living in greater Los Angeles * * * * APOLITICAL GREENS: KOREAN WAR VETERAN BOBBY SHELTON MAKES STRAWBERRY FLAG’S GARDENS GROW PART 1 OF 2 BY LAURA SANDERSON HEALY was “raised up on a farm.” Bobby When I first met Bobby Shelton, knew Lepanto—he said he had he was working as a Compensated picked cotton there when he was Work Therapy (CWT) gardener at just a child—and in high school he Strawberry Flag last fall, tending to played basketball against teams in the re-purposed strawberry plants Memphis, an hour southeast. We of the artwork’s stripes. His soft laughed about people we remem- Southern accent whispered “mid bered, funny names and traits, South” to me; that’s the region of and then on a somber note, Bob- the United Stares from which we by shared with me a story about both originate—the wide Missis- desegregation in Arkansas circa sippi River (“Big Muddy”) bisecting 1957. An enlisted friend in the Na- his northeast Arkansas from my tional Guard was ordered to stand southwest Tennessee. in front of Little Rock Central High School to prevent African-Ameri- Not long after, Bobby and I found can students from rightfully enter- our costumed selves dancing part- ing. Bobby said his friend’s heart ners in the “human flag” perfor- broke when he came eye to eye mance being snapped from the with his own niece trying to enter air by photographer Joshua White. the school. As the humming helicopter flew rounds above Strawberry Flag, When a visitor came to see Bobby’s Bobby and I circled each other ten- greenhouse at Strawberry Flag this tatively in his first strawberry row, spring, Bobby told him, “Arkansas remembering different instruc- has a little bit of everything: dia- tions on whether to move after monds and gold, mosquitoes and eight counts or not. alligators too.” Although Bobby’s sixtieth high school reunion is Drinking tea together one winter this month (no one who knows day beside the tent at Strawberry him would believe that the ener- Flag, I asked Bobby about his child- getic Bobby is in his seventies), he hood in the South, and we turfed will likely be tending to his work up some common ground: the at Strawberry Flag, a job he takes long flat landscape of Poinsett great pride and care in. “It gives County, Arkansas, a mainly rural me motivation and therapy getting area of farmland, figured greatly up every morning to come in and in both of our histories. Growing be able to walk around through the up in Memphis, Tennessee, I spent plants,” Bobby said. “To be able to many happy days visiting friends put a seed in the ground and watch in Lepanto, a grain of a town not it come up is good for an old man Jules Rochielle Sievert, artist and archivist with the Metabolic Studio, checking the well-being of the strawberries far from the small county seat of like me.” in the intensive care unit of Bldg 209: Garden Folly, on site at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Harrisburg where Bobby said he Continued on page 2 It’s Harvest Time at the Gazette BY TERENCE LYONS with tea. But the harvest was more Both the legacy of the Strawberry As the Strawberry Flag, disassem- than that. Henry David Thoreau Flag project and the struggles of vet- bled but with the strawberries still wrote, “true harvest of my life is erans looking for work are the focus alive and growing, rolled down intangible,” and so it is with the of this issue. The place of veterans in Bonsall Avenue from the quad in Strawberry Flag. the larger American society figures front of Building 208 to be recon- in this discussion of harvest, as figured in Los Angeles State His- This issue of the Strawberry Ga- does reflection on the life of a man toric Park north of downtown on zette examines the harvest. In in the Owens Valley. October 1, many of the veterans the agrarian societies of time and artists working on the move gone by, this season that we now The strawberries that made stripes reflected on the project they had call “autumn” was known by of the strawberry flag were rescued tended for more than a year. the name “harvest” – the time from a farm in Rosemead, where of year when people reaped the plants were plowed under after a What had they grown? It was now bounty of their year-long efforts. single harvest. In the flag’s stripes, harvest time, both on the calendar It was also the season when there they yielded multiple crops. So the and for the Strawberry Flag proj- was plenty of work for everyone, harvest, while it may mark the end ect. Of course, they had harvested and so the Gazette addresses the of the growing year, does not have thousands of strawberries, cooked subject of work – jobs and life’s to be the end of the life of any plant them into preserves, and served work – as part of its examination . or any person. There are multiple The Metabolic Studio’s trolley, named for Mark Twain who was fascinated them to each other and to guests of the harvest. harvests still to come. by the West, is an homage to the author who died one hundred years ago. Always do right. That will gratify some of the people, They say that habit is only second nature; who knows 2 and astonish the rest. but that Nature is the first habit. —Mark Twain —Pascal, around 1630 APOLITICAL GREENS... a tour around there and the old VA We entered Bobby’s Garden and I want. I just tell them what I need tomatoes. They’ll be about four CONTINUED » Veterans Gardens site down the I listened to him describe all that and they make sure that I get it. I feet high.” Of the strawberry hill where he was a longtime em- he had planted, right there on the plant the seeds and wait for them plants that were not in one of the I wanted to learn more about how ployee before the VA’s Incentive VA property, fresh food that would to come up and materialize, and I “stripes,” he said, “We took ’em Bobby and his coworkers coaxed Therapy (IT) and CWT programs go to the Strawberry Flag kitchen bring them from the greenhouse out of circulation and they’re do- the strawberries to grow so beau- there came to a halt in 2009. in Building 208. “We picked rad- to the garden and then take them ing fine. The runner beans, pole tifully, and also find out about his ishes yesterday; they’re exactly from the garden to the table.” beans, are going to go up here, and planted vegetable garden, which On the day of my tour, I could see the right size a radish should be, they are going to grow right up the is located right in the VA ground— that the VA property’s gophers, a little bit smaller than a quarter. Though the okra was about to corn.” as innovative a use of federal prop- which live under the quad, had It doesn’t take them long, they’re come up, Bobby was concerned erty as I would ever see. “Bobby’s been busy. “The guys started teas- about one of the quickest things to that he had planted it “a little bit After showing me his garden, Garden,” as it has come to be ing me that he (the gopher) was sprout up out of the ground—four too early; the ground should be re- Bobby drove me in the Strawberry known, is planted in the quad- coming for my garden,” Bobby or five days after you plant them ally warm when you plant okra, it’s Flag golf cart down the hill and rangle in front of Building 205 said. “I’m not worried about it. they’re up. Beets take a long time; a summer plant.” Another group past the baseball field that UCLA next to Strawberry Flag behind a I’ve put my mojo on it—a remedy I should have planted them about of leafy plants—“those are collard leases from the VA to the Veterans dark green picket fence (which we used back in Arkansas—and January or February.” greens”—caused Bobby to make a Gardens area where he worked for was painted white when it was you’ll see it work. [Note: Rumor confession. “The one thing I don’t nine years. The non-profit Rancho first put up in February), and vege- has it that Juicy Fruit gum and Bobby was proud to have grown like is spinach. My mom used Santa Ana Botanic Garden was tables and fruits are also growing garlic were involved.] I’m going everything from seed. “I start ev- to make me drink spinach juice scheduled to start managing the in eleven oversized “ag bins” (6 × 3 to get him, and if I can get one of erything in my little greenhouse. when I was a kid and I didn’t like site for the VA, but much to Bob- × 3–foot wooden planting boxes). them, I will put the rest of them in I don’t use plants; the company the taste of it.” As we looked at the by’s chagrin the area looked like a When he had time, Bobby gave me flight.” provides me with any kind of seed thriving vegetables, Bobby nod- ghost town.

Load more