By Joe Blackstock | joe.blackstock@gmail.com | Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
About 1956, the Graber family of Ontario became very concerned because their ranch in Hemet was having a down year producing olives - the family's principal product.
The family, whose Graber Olive House was the oldest business in Ontario, knew it was going to take some ingenuity to make a profit that year, and that's just what Bob Graber used with his out-of-the-ordinary plan.
"He decided to package water in a can," explained Maura Graber, a member of the family. For about six years, the Grabers bottled tin cans of "Sterilized Drinking Water," with a paper label, selling them in four-can boxes or full cases.
As insignificant as that might sound to us, surrounded today by endless supermarket aisles of plastic water bottles, the concept certainly produced something then which was not available to consumers. And it helped keep the company stay afloat for the short term.
But what made all this so timely was the state of the world in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Cold War threats about Russia or China and chaos in the Middle East and Southeast Asia prompted all sorts of dramatic fears of civilians, some of whom even went to the extreme of digging their own fallout shelters.
And what better to fill these hideouts from our enemies than Graber's 14-ounce tin cans of essential water?
"The tin protects the water from fallout contamination and a low purchase price makes them available to all," said Grayburn Martin, Ontario's Civil Defense director, in the Sun newspaper Aug. 3, 1958. He said he thought the Graber water product "gives promise of major importance."
Martin distributed samples of the Graber water the day before at an Ontario conference of regional officials involved in Civil Defense - the civilian agency in each town assigned to help protect residents during wartime or in a disaster.
The canned water by the Grabers gained some popularity, both for civilian protection as well as for travelers or sportsmen who carried supplies of water while away from home. The article noted that local schools and cities at that time were buying up the Graber cans to expand their emergency supplies.
While the water in the Grabers' cans may last forever, they weren't a great profit center for the family, especially as their olive crops improved. By about 1962, the Grabers ended water production and opened their gift shop offering a variety of new products. Over the subsequent half-century, the Olive House became a regular tourist attraction in conjunction with its olive packing facility.
There are even some of the water cans still around. Four Graber cans and its box have recently been donated to the Ontario Museum of History & Art and are part of its Built on Water display. A few may also still exist buried deep inside a local fallout shelter, if such things still exist.
I asked if the water from the existing cans from so long ago was still good, and Maura said she thought the contents were still drinkable. However, we didn't pop open any of the cans, choosing to save them for some future emergency.
Unfortunately, the Graber Olive House, hampered by a series of poor olive crops, is now closed. Maura and husband Cliff Graber say the company's future is uncertain.
My friend Barbara Kirsch of Yucaipa may be 94 but she can still recall many events of her youth.
Those memories were sparked when she read our column here three weeks ago about a captured Japanese mini-submarine which toured throughout the nation during World War II, encouraging residents to buy war bonds.
The sub had run aground after being targeted by U.S. aircraft during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The sub made stops in the five Inland Empire cities just before Christmas 1942.
Kirsch, who grew up in Altadena, can remember getting a very up-close look at the sub on Dec. 14, 1942, when it stopped in Pasadena, just before it headed to its next stop in Pomona. Most people attending the event were only allowed to look through windows built into the sub's side because its hatch was extremely narrow. As with most 12-year-olds, she wanted a better look and was one of the few permitted inside because she could fit through the hatch.
"I remember climbing up the ladder and getting inside the submarine," she explained. But her time inside the sub was very limited.
"I don't really remember what it looked like because I was a bit claustrophobic inside it," she explained. "All I knew is that I had to get out of it, right away!"