They say that the “Good Die Young.” I don’t know about all of the young, but I do know that there is one young man who left this mortal coil way too soon. He left us with memories that will last forever. This particular young man was a giant in the Valley we call home. There may be some who didn’t know him, but there are none that will forget him.
I met Eddie Silva when I stopped at the Sugar Bowl Restaurant that now holds Chiloko. He didn’t have an office there, but you could usually find him sitting there meeting with folks and making phone calls to his sons and crews. You could not get mad at Eddie. He was just too full of happy. He was totally in charge of his family farms. I’ll never forget the first time I sat down with him. I was trying to find work a little closer to Salinas because the long drive every morning to King City was getting on my nerves. I figured that he might need someone to help move his product from our Valley to the East Coast.
I just walked in and over to his booth. I asked if he minded if I sat down. He looked up with a smile and said, “Sure!” I didn’t know if he even knew my name, but he didn’t hesitate. I wasn’t living in Gonzales at that time, but he didn’t act like you might be interfering with his daily duties. Later, after I had come to know him a little better, I was even more impressed by his demeanor.
Eddie was a guy that you wanted to know. He just seemed to be smiling all the time. The servers in the restaurant kept his cup filled without a word said. I had sat with him a couple of times, but this was where he did a lot of his work. So my visits with him were short. He always made you feel as though he was waiting for you to come along.
Eddie was our Santa Claus for the City of Gonzales. It was hard to determine who was having the best time, him or the children he passed out toys and candy to. He would come down from the sky in a helicopter dressed in his Santa Claus suit. He did this every year at Silva Farms and his smile just lit up the area. Everyone in town was invited and everyone looked forward to it all year.
As time went on, I did have a business license as a produce broker and was working for a company in Salinas. One time I drove by his offices and stopped in. He was a shipper of broccoli to the East Coast, and like a lot of shippers, he had a hard time making delivery. During the summer, broccoli was cut and packed into a waxed carton and then, when it arrived at the cooler, the boxes were filled with an ice slurry. Then the shipper would cross their fingers praying that the driver of the truck would watch the temps inside the trailer. In high summer, the tires on an “Over the Road” truck would get so hot that they would melt the slurry and the receiver would short pay the invoice for poor arrival.
On one day during the summer, I stopped at Eddie’s and asked what he thought would happen if the broccoli was super cooled at the shipping point. He said I could try and find out if I wanted to. So I would pick and choose what we thought would be an attentive driver to the temps in the trailer. The broccoli losses suffered when the product arrived hot on the East Coast. Both the shipper and buyer lost money when the commodity arrived out of grade.
During this time I kept thinking there had to be a way. I was working with a broker that had a booth in the New York Produce Center, and I thought it might be possible to ship the broccoli without the ice slurry, which was the accepted method for keeping the broccoli within grade. The results were not what we wanted, but Eddie told us to just keep trying.
I have one last anecdote that you should know about Eddie. Many years ago when I was a sales manager for a company in Salinas, my boss was a little selfish. One day when I was talking to one of the guys in the cooler, she turned to me and said I should be very careful about Eddie, as she had heard him saying something derogative about me. I was a little surprised, as Eddie was not shy and I thought if he had something to say he would always come to me. That was how our friendship had evolved.
So I walked out of the office and drove down to Gonzales, where I saw his truck outside the restaurant. I walked in and told him what had been said. He stood up and walked out. I found out later that he had driven to town and walked in to tell the person that “If I said something to say, they should ask me.” So guess who had my back? I have never forgotten that, since I have always tried to teach my children about loyalty. This man had it in spades.
Last Saturday, Lorraine and I had the opportunity to share with all his family and friends, stories, memories and love with each other. It was just like Eddie would want — food, drink and fellowship. Everyone was there, from every walk of life, which showed how larger than life Eddie Silva was.
Godspeed my friend, and thanks for all the great memories.
