Historic Hood River
Time to Spray
3-18-2021
Notes
This W. F. Laraway negative shows a nice mix of old and new. The horse drawn wagon has a nice gasoline powered sprayer unit on it.
Dean Fletcher’s caption offers some fine detail:
Howard Cooper working with an Ideal Spray Machine. The Ideal Spray Machine was advertised in Better Fruit magazine as “Planned and built in Hood River to meet the needs of Hood River orchards.” Made by D. McDonald, 1910 price was $250. Motor chain is attached to agitator screw, located inside the tank, to keep arsenate -of-lead spray solution in suspension. [A-030]
nels
Lead arsenate. Oh boy. Perfect apples. No insect would touch them, on pain of death. Don’t know about eating them.
L.E.
Charlott will have to fill us in with some family details. Howard’s middle name is Laraway. In 1910 he is 12 years old.
He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery
ArthurB
Yes, A.I. Mason wrote proudly about the white coating on his apples (lead arsenate) which meant there were no worms in the whole box.
kmb
I was wondering about the optical illusion of how many horses there are – I think there must be two, one on each side of the tow bar. Arsenate-of-lead doesn’t sound like the healthiest of substances to be around. Makes me wonder how many IQ points were lost by the workers that handled and breathed the spray in. Not sure when they stopped using it, but also makes me wonder if there are still higher than desirable levels of lead in the orchard soil today.
ArthurB
I see 3 rear hooves.
nels
The late Ron Stewart, was an avid proselytizer of organic as well as a grower of great produce. His sons now have HR Organics Juices. He was accused of causing insect outbreaks so he and another organic orchardist would walk the canals at night to track down whatever was hatching. He found one insect nested in the oak trees by day and invaded the orchards by night. He broke ground in making organic compost and brought in a European tractor tiller and a Quaker farmer to teach them how to use it. (Quakers travel with the whole family!) He also conducted tours of organic orcharding when others thought it was no viable. And he’d fill up his truck and go into Portland to pedal his organics. Mexican pickers liked to work for him because they knew about the poisonous sprays. He jokingly said if the Dept of Agriculture knew how much arsenic was in the soil they’d make them put up chain link fences and label it as ‘Dangerous – No Trespassing’ Wonder if they test soils for lead arsenate.
Charlott
Howard Laraway Cooper’s grandmother was Cora Etta Laraway. She was the daughter of William Fouts Laraway. That made her a sister to Percy Laraway.
Charlott
Mistake on my part. There were two Howard Laraway Coopers, The Howard that would have been in connection with this would have been Howard Sr. Cora Etta Laraway would have been his mother.