Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice...

―Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

 

In 1929 several of my ancestors, including my great-grandparents, drove from Michigan to California seeking fruit picking work in the orange groves in Redlands, California. They ran out of money a year later and, after my grandmother was conceived, returned to Michigan. My great-grandfather apparently sold his wristwatch to pay for the return trip.

 

Upon returning to Michigan, one of these relatives started a business with a man she fell in love with in Redlands, using discarded foam from a nearby chemical company to make products such as artificial snow, refrigerator door liners, canoes, toilet floats, and parts pallets custom-made for the Detroit auto industry.

 

These photographs show the groves and fruit packing plants in Redlands where my family worked picking fruit, the property where they lived, the factory they built after returning to Michigan, and some of their early products and prototypes. When I moved to Los Angeles in 2010, my first job was photographing watches for a secondhand dealer, so I also included photographs made during my time working in the Los Angeles jewelry district, including many watches.