We tend to memorialize two kinds of lives: big public lives and the lives that are closest to us. Both make perfect sense. Most big lives matter a little bit to a lot of people. The people we know matter a lot, but only to us.
No one would think it wrong to memorialize the people who matter most directly to us. Nor need we exaggerate the truth to do so. It is good people living non-public lives that make the world work, and I venture to suggest that nearly all the goodness in the world is lived in non-public lives. Yet there is much to admire in big lives, too. I expressed my own admiration for the lives of people that risk the comfort and security of a life within the normal bounds and try to achieve more. They, too, give us something important.
We are sometimes deficient in memorializing the people closest to us, but we usually do them justice. Collectively, we are rarely deficient in memorializing the famous, though depending on the life and the times, we can be monstrously deficient or ridiculously effusive in our praise.
But what about lives lived somewhere in-between?
The recent deaths of two people, neither of whom you will have heard of or that I knew personally, nevertheless meant something more to me than the passing of this celebrity or that once famous person. Both added value to my life and, I am sure, to quite a few other people in their communities. I imagine they knew that, but I don’t suppose they heard it as often as they deserved.
A few weeks back I read with real sadness of the death of Lorri Duckworth, one of the owners of the Duckworth Family Farms. She died at the unseasonably young age (at least from my vantage point north of this) of 62. My whole family felt the loss. Duckworth Family Farms is a u-pick blueberry farm in Sonoma County about an hour from where I live. It’s a place I visit every year with as much of my family as we can gather. From Grammy to our youngest, we tied our collecting boxes around our waist and debauched into Duckworth’s blue-spangled fields. No blueberry tastes better than when you’ve hand-selected it, bent double, and plucked it from the vine. And yes, there was shrinkage along the way.
I’ve loved u-pick since I was child in Glastonbury, CT, climbing ladders to twist apples off the branch and hungering for freshly made cider. Can any kid resist the temptation of fresh-picked fruit or the joy of the hunt for the perfect specimen? Can I?
Yet Duckworth holds a special place in my heart. U-pick in Sonoma is a rarity as orchards have been transmogrified into vineyards, and family farms have gone the way of commercial enterprises. With millions of nearby urban dwellers and perhaps the highest density of foodies in the world just a short drive away, Duckworth does not lack for visitors. Some other u-pick’s in Sonoma have morphed over the years from family farms into tree circuses complete with bouncy houses, parking fees, club memberships, and prices reminiscent of Pinot Noir not Yellow Delicious. When you can charge people more for the privilege of picking their own fruit, you do.
Unless you are Lorri Duckworth and family. Because Duckworth never turned the u-pick experience into a circus. They’ve always charged appreciably less per pound than you pay at the Ferry Building, and the only extra is their very reasonably priced blueberry ice cream that, as a parent, you are only too happy to buy after picking in a hot sun. They brought care, attention and love to the whole endeavor. And I’m pretty sure that was Lorri explaining to my daughters how to pick blueberries and how to find the best ones.
We never had a bad day there, and we’ve had many, many good ones.
So, it’s no surprise that every year at the beginning of June a little alarm goes off in all our mental calendars and everyone starts asking me if the blueberries are ripening and if I’ve reserved a picking slot. This year will be no exception, and I hope my youngest daughter will be able to join us in her brief time home. There’s nothing special about us. I don’t know Lorri or the Duckworths. We’re just like lots of other families that the Duckworth’s have made very happy over many years. Made happy just by doing something they loved and by staying true to their vision of what the experience should be. Hearing about her death made us very sad.
Then, just ten days ago, a second death was broadcast across the family text chat. Raul Porto Sr., the co-founder of L.A.’s beloved Porto’s Bakery had died (aged 92). I knew Raul Porto even less than I knew Lorri. I never even met Raul. But you didn’t need to meet Raul to know about Porto’s. Porto’s is legendary in Southern California. Legendary, too, in the Filipino community there where much of my wife’s family lives. If her family was visiting up here in San Francisco, they came with a box of Porto’s pastries. Filipino’s do not visit without food in hand. And no food was ever as welcome in my house as a box of Porto’s. And, of course, if we were down there and flying home, we left with a box of Porto’s. It was a rare flight at Burbank airport where our box was the only one coming on board.
If you went to Porto’s, you would see (besides the inevitable and seemingly unshrinkable line), an endless stream of happy people carrying boxes of pastries and goodies away. My own box was nearly always stuffed full of guava pastries, of which I do not think I could ever eat enough to be sated. There is always room for another guava pastry. Yes, I am notorious for my love of bakeries and baked goods. When I visit a city, my first google search is always for the best bakeries. When I leave, I’ve always tried more than one. My life is a race between baked goods and exercise, and we all know which one will ultimately win.
And no, Porto’s isn’t the best bakery in the world. But Porto’s is damn good pastry at an exceptionally fair price. It is a place, like Duckworth Family Farms, that never strayed from its founder’s vision. Never stopped delivering a great experience (and a great pastry), never took advantage of its fame or popularity. It is a place that made my family and I happy many times, over many years. And like Duckworth, my family is just one tiny drop among an ocean of fans.
Both Lorri Duckworth and Raul Porto Sr. created something that fostered community, became part of our (and many other) family traditions, and generated value beyond their ability to know or measure. Along the way, they built successful businesses. These aren’t the Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg kind of businesses. That’s its own kind of success with its own kind of value. As an entrepreneur closer in scale to Duckworth and Porto’s than Gates or Zuckerberg, I admire the vast empires they were able to create, but I know I could never do anything similar.
Very few of us COULD do what Gates or Zuckerberg have done. Yet the temptation to milk every possible dollar from a business is fierce. In staying true to their vision and making many people a little bit happier, Duckworth and Porto both did something that very few of us WOULD do. Their lives remind us that the beating heart of entrepreneurship is a beating heart. Most business owners aren’t tech titans. They are just people who took a chance. Who love their work. Love what they do. Love what they provide.
The special ones never lose that love.
In some small way our long custom is a way of saying thank you. For many years we have voted with our feet and our wallets — in the way that matters most to any small business. I don’t discount that. I know how much loyal customers mean to a business owner. But at the end of their day, it doesn’t feel like quite enough.
Though I write a lot about ethics and decision-making, I don’t give advice and I firmly believe that one person’s good life isn’t necessarily another’s. When it comes to living a good life, no one’s an expert. This little essay will likely never be read by the Porto’s or the Duckworth’s, but it’s my way of trying to repay our debt. To say thank you. For myself. For my wife. For my daughters. We’re just people who bought your pastries or who picked your berries once or twice a year. You don’t know us. But you’ve given us, and many others, moments of joy.
To me, that’s a darn good life.