When Rudolph Hass was going to dig up the earth to remove that small avocado tree that he had planted in his orchard because it was of no use to him, they convinced him not to do it.
It was the late 1920s. He had arrived in Pasadena, outside Los Angeles, in September 1923 with his wife Elizabeth and their 18-month-old daughter, Betty. Part of the family, which had already settled in the area, had encouraged them to follow in their footsteps.
They traveled 3,300 kilometers from their native Milwaukee, in the northern United States, in a bumpy journey aboard an old Ford T that Rudolph had bought from a co-worker in 1920 for $75 and that arrived in the southwest of the country without the rear fender and with a flat tire.
Back in California, Rudie, as he was called, first got a job at a fruit and vegetable stand, then he was a salesman for a manufacturer of hosiery, underwear, and accessories. He sold washing machines and vacuum cleaners, until he was hired as a mail carrier by the Pasadena Post Office.
That happened, according to his wife’s notes, in 1926. Although that text was written decades later and other data included therein do not exactly match the documentation that proves it.
One day, while delivering mail, Rudie saw an ad in a magazine advertising land with avocado trees – called paltas in part of South America – from which bills were hung, according to Elizabeth’s version.
GinaRose Kimball, historian of the Hass avocado, affirms that that advertisement probably had a bag with the symbol of dollars and one of these fruits next to it, rather than a money tree.
California, which did not have avocado plantations while it was Mexican territory, had timidly begun to cultivate them when, in the 1870s, three seedlings brought from Mexico were planted in Santa Barbara; Half a century later, the avocado was promoted as a promising business in the state.
Rudie was enthused, and when he was able to sell a piece of property they had near Milwaukee, he took the money, borrowed as much from a sister, and went to the office of the local Los Angeles businessman he had seen in the ad.
It was Edwin Hart, who had learned about the avocado in Mexico at the end of the 19th century and in 1919 bought the La Habra ranch, some 1,500 hectares on the outskirts of Los Angeles and not far from Pasadena, to plant that fruit and then sell plots.
Rudie purchased a 1.93 acre piece of land -7,800 square meters- that already had some avocado trees in that rural area that by then had been renamed La Habra Heights. He agreed to pay US$3,800 in quarterly installments. The initial deposit was US$760.
“When he bought it, he wanted to grow a different variety, possibly Lyon,” says Kimball. That’s a large, hard-skinned Guatemalan-type variety that a man named Lyon had planted in Hollywood in the early 1900s and that in his early years seemed to hold the most promise. The usual thing in California at that time was for the owners of the avocado plantations to put their last name on each new variety of the fruit.
By the time Rudolph started in the business, the most common variety was the Fuerte, named after having survived a fierce frost that occurred in California in 1913. This avocado, being of the Mexican type, is characterized by having a soft and smooth skin, easy to peel
Horticulturist Albert Rideout then had a specialty avocado nursery near La Habra Heights. Any avocado seed he found, wherever he went, he would plant in search of new varieties.
Rudie went to that nursery and bought a bag of what they thought was a Guatemalan avocado, which, unlike the Mexican one, has a hard shell.
Back in his orchard, he took boxes of apples that he filled with sawdust and planted the seeds inside. He watered them and watered them until they sprouted, and when the stems were about the thickness of a pencil, just over half an inch, he transplanted them into the ground and protected them with cardboard.
Then, with the help of a specialist named Caulkins, he used those new plants to graft shoots taken from Fuerte and Lyon avocado trees.
This technique is used to reproduce plants but it does not imply creating a hybrid of the new with the old; genetic mixtures are formed through pollination. Instead, it seeks to grow new trees of the bud variety. In the case of Rudolph Hass, he wanted new trees from Fuerte y Lyon.
But one of the new plants refused to receive those grafts. Tried once, wouldn’t turn on. A second time, nothing. For each new attempt they had to wait for the time of year when it should be done. After the third failure, Rudie got tired and wanted to remove the new tree from her garden.
Caulkins suggested that he not kill it, that he leave it there.
In 1931 that plant gave its first six avocados. For the following year there were already 125.
They were dark on the outside, a mixture of black and purple, with rough skin, and they made an unpleasant impression, as if rotten. Nothing to do with the bright green skin of the avocados they used to eat in California.
But her children tried them and they really liked them. Inside they were creamy, with a high oil content, of a good consistency -it was not fibrous- and with a nutty aftertaste. There Rudie saw the commercial vein.
“Rudolph, in addition to having a full-time job, was a salesman. He sent the children to the corner, West Road and Hacienda Road, with wooden boxes to sell the avocados. He sold where he could: to his friends, to his co-workers at the post office,” says Kimball.
At first it was difficult for him due to the appearance, but little by little he convinced more people.
“Mr. Carter, from the avocado company, came and encouraged Rudie to try it. He mailed a box to Chicago and back (…) and on the return they were still solid,” his wife wrote in the notebook. of family memories.
That excited him, since until then the shipment of avocados sent to the northeast of the country arrived in poor condition, overripe or with blows that accelerated their putrefaction.
In 1935 he decided to patent his avocado as a new variety and gave it his last name. He later partnered with Brokaw, Rideout’s uncle with large plantations in the area, to expand Hass production.
It wasn’t a big deal. By August 1952, when the patent rights expired, Rudie had earned just over $4,800.
“The name stuck, but the money never came,” says Jeff Hass, one of his grandsons.
In June 1952 he had retired from his postal job, and in gratitude for more than a quarter century as an employee, the Pasadena Post Office announced that it would give him a certificate of appreciation.
In November of that year the certificate arrived, but Rudie had died a month before of a heart attack.
The Hass variety today represents 95% of the avocados produced in the world, according to Peter Shore, vice president of product management at Calavo, a company founded by California avocado growers. And it’s a multi-billion dollar industry.
“There are millions and millions of Hass avocado trees, and they all came from that one original tree,” Shore says.
Rudie believed that his Hass avocado was of the Guatemalan type, but a study published in 2019 on its genome confirmed that the origin of this fruit is 61% Mexican and 39% Guatemalan.
“Mexican genes allow Hass to reach maturity earlier than pure Guatemalan cultivars and give the tree and fruit more cold tolerance, though not as much as a pure Mexican cultivar. Guatemalan genes give thicker skin to fruit, but thin enough to peel easily,” notes the book Avocado Production in California. A Cultural Handbook for Growers, published by the University of California and the California Avocado Society.
The mother tree ended up getting sick and in 2002 it had to be felled.
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