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00:00:50 5.15, American Standard Time.

00:00:53 The day and rush is on as homebound workers throng the streets of every city, town, and hamlet.

00:00:58 The Jane and John Doe's of the workaday world, all of them made kin by thoughts of home and that looking-ahead-to-dinner gleam in their eyes.

00:01:07 Out at the other end of town, it's hustle and bustle time too, the climax of the day for Mrs. Housewife as she whips up the vittles for a family that will soon be in from work and play.

00:01:24 Chubby tore Dorothy's dress today.

00:01:26 Oh, I don't suppose he meant to.

00:01:28 Yes, he did, and he had to stay after school for it.

00:01:40 Nearly through, dear.

00:01:41 Nearly through, dear.

00:01:46 You just know it's getting close to nose-bag time, for here comes the star boarder.

00:01:51 Nothing could have torn Junior away from that sandlot ballgame but an empty inner boy hollering for help.

00:02:00 Hello, son.

00:02:01 Hello, Mom.

00:02:07 Here, here.

00:02:08 Not a bad.

00:02:12 What you got for dinner, Mom?

00:02:13 This, Junior, is a roast of lamb.

00:02:15 Boy, it sure smells good.

00:02:18 Now run along, get ready for dinner, son.

00:02:20 Aw, gee.

00:02:21 Your father will be here any minute.

00:02:23 And hungry.

00:02:25 Okay.

00:02:26 Okay.

00:02:39 And does Mary Butler know her appetite appeal?

00:02:42 It's Del Monte early garden peas tonight.

00:02:46 And when those succulent green gems go on the table as a partner to that roast, well, can't you just smell a dinner fit for a king?

00:02:56 How's the baseball game come out today, son?

00:02:58 Well, we beat the sluggers three to nothing.

00:03:00 You did?

00:03:01 Make any home runs?

00:03:02 I made one.

00:03:03 Good.

00:03:09 Could I have some more, Dad?

00:03:10 What?

00:03:12 You got a regular man-sized appetite tonight, son.

00:03:14 Well, I've been doing man-sized work.

00:03:17 You mean chasing that baseball around the sandlot?

00:03:20 Well, it makes you awfully hungry.

00:03:27 That's his third helping, Daddy.

00:03:29 So what?

00:03:30 You've had two.

00:03:31 Now, now, children.

00:03:33 There's plenty for everyone.

00:03:35 Daddy, did you have peas like this when you were little?

00:03:38 Yes, Lynn.

00:03:39 We had peas that tasted just like these.

00:03:41 Only not as often as you do.

00:03:43 Why not?

00:03:44 Well, we had to wait until they were in season.

00:03:47 I used to go out in the garden and pick them fresh for dinner.

00:03:50 Daddy, how do peas grow?

00:03:52 On a vine, stupid.

00:03:53 Don't you know anything?

00:03:55 That's enough, Junior.

00:03:56 Finish your dinner.

00:03:57 I mean, how do they get in the can?

00:04:00 You really want to know?

00:04:01 Uh-huh.

00:04:02 Well, I'll tell you.

00:04:03 After dinner, we'll get the big one to book,

00:04:05 and I'll tell you the whole story.

00:04:07 Well, how's Daddy's little girl tonight, huh?

00:04:09 Well.

00:04:10 That's good.

00:04:15 That's it.

00:04:16 No, this isn't a page.

00:04:19 Here it is.

00:04:22 Daddy, how do peas grow?

00:04:24 On a vine, stupid.

00:04:25 Don't you know anything?

00:04:26 That's enough, Junior.

00:04:27 You really want to know?

00:04:28 Uh-huh.

00:04:29 Well, I'll tell you.

00:04:30 After dinner, we'll get the big one to book,

00:04:32 and I'll tell you the whole story.

00:04:34 Here it is.

00:04:41 You know,

00:04:46 when I was a boy,

00:04:47 we had a small vegetable garden

00:04:49 not far from the kitchen door.

00:04:51 When peas were in season,

00:04:52 Mother used to send me out to pick them.

00:04:54 She and your Aunt Carrie used to shell them by hand.

00:04:59 But nowadays, think how much easier it is.

00:05:02 Why, we can have fresh peas any day in the year,

00:05:05 grown especially for canning on great farms like this.

00:05:13 Down below, hedged around by a checkerboard

00:05:15 of golden grain fields and yellow-green corn,

00:05:18 are the pea fields of the Midwest,

00:05:20 part of America's great pea-growing region.

00:05:23 Much of this fertile soil, as in other favored pea regions,

00:05:26 is now farmed by Del Monte,

00:05:28 plan planted to bring each field to perfection

00:05:31 in proper succession,

00:05:32 that canning may continue in full swing rhythm

00:05:35 throughout the season.

00:05:36 Here, during the Black Hawk War,

00:05:38 a trio of famous men,

00:05:40 Abraham Lincoln,

00:05:41 Zachary Taylor,

00:05:42 and Jefferson Davis,

00:05:43 gathered together in consul

00:05:45 on a piece of land now farmed by Del Monte.

00:05:48 Who could have foreseen in that distant hour

00:05:50 that the rolling prairies of Illinois

00:05:52 would one day become this lush green garden?

00:05:56 In the towns that dot the countryside,

00:05:58 breathes a social and economic life

00:06:00 that hinges on the harvest and canning of vegetables

00:06:03 for the market baskets of the world.

00:06:06 As the season nears,

00:06:07 conversation on every hand

00:06:09 turns to one major question.

00:06:11 How's the pack this year?

00:06:13 For when the pods are well-filled

00:06:15 and the harvest heavy,

00:06:16 there's work for everyone

00:06:18 and community prosperity.

00:06:21 From the surrounding fields,

00:06:22 endless truckloads of peas,

00:06:24 harvested just at the instant nature says ready,

00:06:27 converge on big canneries like this one,

00:06:30 located at strategic points

00:06:32 wherever the peas grow best.

00:06:38 Long before the vines in the fields

00:06:40 poked their tendrils above ground,

00:06:42 Del Monte field men were busy on soil tests,

00:06:45 fertilization,

00:06:46 selection of seed,

00:06:48 and painstaking soil preparation,

00:06:50 lending every scientific aid

00:06:52 to develop the finest peas that can be grown.

00:06:55 For it's in the field,

00:06:56 and in the field alone,

00:06:58 that quality is made.

00:07:02 Now with the vines full grown,

00:07:04 every safeguard is taken to protect that quality

00:07:07 right into the can.

00:07:09 Every field must be cut when the peas are just so.

00:07:12 Timing counts and how.

00:07:14 One hour too early or too late

00:07:16 and that prime quality may be lost forever.

00:07:20 Comes the zero hour and harvesting begins.

00:07:23 The peas in their pods are just

00:07:25 busting their buttons with on-the-minute freshness.

00:07:28 There's not an hour to lose

00:07:29 and the mowers move in to capture

00:07:31 that June morning flavor right off the vine.

00:07:35 There's no twiddling thumbs when nature's the timekeeper.

00:07:38 From the minute the field checker gives his go-ahead,

00:07:41 it's a race of men and machines against time.

00:07:44 It's a chain of many links, this harvest job,

00:07:47 each dependent on the other.

00:07:49 If only one machine fails, the chain is broken,

00:07:52 the whole canning sequence thrown out of stride.

00:07:57 When the vines are covered with dew

00:07:59 and the pods are crisp and snappy,

00:08:01 when the peas are at their peak,

00:08:03 that's when the mower goes to town.

00:08:06 Hightailing its way down the pea patch,

00:08:08 it cheers off each vine

00:08:10 like barber clippers on the back of your neck.

00:08:13 And then, like a juggler that does a different trick

00:08:16 with either hand, rolls them into tidy windrows,

00:08:19 ready for the loading crews that follow right behind.

00:08:23 With train-scheduled precision,

00:08:25 the loaders follow right on the heels,

00:08:27 or rather the clippers, of the mowing machine.

00:08:30 Pods are still crisp with dew

00:08:32 as that venerable farm tool, the pitchfork,

00:08:35 begins hoisting them onto the wagons.

00:08:39 Relentlessly, the wagon trains move down the windrows,

00:08:42 pitchers on either side holding a steady pace

00:08:45 to keep in motion the rhythmic cycle

00:08:48 from cutting to canning.

00:08:50 There's no stop sign for these men

00:08:52 until the wagons are loaded.

00:08:55 And if you've never worked on a farm,

00:08:57 just try that on your sacroiliac.

00:09:06 But maybe this type of pitchfork is more to your liking.

00:09:09 Fast mechanical loaders to speed up the harvest

00:09:12 on big farms like this,

00:09:14 straddling the rows so as not to injure the pods,

00:09:17 it carries its own passport to any spot in the field.

00:09:20 It's endless grapplers, gentle as a kitten,

00:09:23 pick up the vines, take them for an escalator ride,

00:09:26 and toss them lightly onto the load.

00:09:30 More and more, Del Monte uses such high-speed equipment

00:09:33 to step up the harvest pace

00:09:35 to safeguard that distinctive quality

00:09:37 Del Monte demands in peas.

00:09:39 For Del Monte methods, like Del Monte men,

00:09:42 must lead in the march of progress.

00:09:47 Loaded now, looking like a parade

00:09:49 of gray-green circus elephants linked trunk to tail,

00:09:52 the wagon train lumbers across the fields

00:09:54 to the vining station

00:09:56 for the next chapter of pea progress.

00:10:02 Hour after hour, the loaded wagons roll up to the viners,

00:10:05 those shiny cylinders that look like aluminum prairie schooners.

00:10:09 The vining station is the heartbeat of the harvest,

00:10:12 a teeming beehive of men and machinery

00:10:14 that does what the housewife used to do by hand,

00:10:17 shell the peas.

00:10:19 This machine, supplanting slow, costly hand methods,

00:10:22 really put America into the pea business in a big way.

00:10:26 What happens inside the viner is much the same

00:10:29 as if you tossed a pea pod in the air

00:10:31 and gave it a firm whack with a flat paddle.

00:10:34 Inside the viner, huge paddles set at just the right angle

00:10:38 smack each mass of falling pods and vines.

00:10:41 The air inside each pod is compressed by the blow.

00:10:44 The pod bursts open at the seams and the tender peas burst out,

00:10:48 just as firm and uninjured as though you had shelled them by hand.

00:10:55 And so the harvest job goes on, often through the night.

00:10:59 There's only one moment in the life of every pea field

00:11:02 when nature says, now's the time to act.

00:11:05 And be it dawn or midnight,

00:11:07 that's the instant Del Monte men spring into action.

00:11:10 Only such vigilance can capture the tenderness and flavor

00:11:13 for which the Del Monte label always stands.

00:11:20 Short moments away from the harvest fields,

00:11:22 the peas arrive at the cannery,

00:11:24 where they wonder perhaps, what are these fellows doing?

00:11:28 But they'll have to get used to constant inspection.

00:11:31 By the time they're ready for the shiny tins

00:11:33 at the other end of the cannery,

00:11:34 they'll be the most scrutinized peas in the world.

00:11:41 Here is the dispatch room that starts the peas over the packing line.

00:11:45 From here on, every pea will pass through test after test,

00:11:49 elimination after elimination,

00:11:51 until at the end, only the very prime peas

00:11:54 will have won their spurs for the Del Monte early garden pack.

00:11:58 From start to finish, it's every pea for himself,

00:12:01 and only the fit survive.

00:12:06 Chapter one in the cannery story is the shaker cleaner,

00:12:09 a cute gadget with a movement like a rumba dancer,

00:12:12 only more of it.

00:12:14 The peas dance along until they find a convenient

00:12:16 little manhole to drop through,

00:12:18 while any pods, stems, or bits of vine

00:12:20 get shunted onto a side track.

00:12:22 This is just a sort of warmer upper.

00:12:25 Those peas ain't seen nothing yet.

00:12:28 Now the peas cease to be land lovers

00:12:31 and turn into long-distance swimmers,

00:12:33 and what a dunking.

00:12:35 In the riffle washer, they shoot the shoots

00:12:37 in clean, fresh water,

00:12:39 so regulated that peas pass over,

00:12:41 while heavier matter is trapped in the riffles.

00:12:45 Then they get taken for a ride by a spiral conveyor

00:12:48 that boosts them along to a rotary washer.

00:12:51 Being heavier than water, peas sink to the bottom.

00:12:54 Bits of stems, leaves, or skins are skimmed off the top.

00:12:59 By now, Mr. and Mrs. Pea began to think

00:13:01 life in a cannery is one long Saturday night.

00:13:05 In the rotary washer, they take a scrubbing

00:13:07 like a small boy whose folks are expecting company.

00:13:10 If peas had ears, this washer would gap behind them,

00:13:13 and that's no foolin'.

00:13:18 The next operation gives two things,

00:13:20 an elevator ride and a bubble bath.

00:13:23 As the peas travel up a pipe conveyor

00:13:25 to the top floor of the cannery,

00:13:27 the water that carries them is bubbled constantly

00:13:29 by a stop-and-go surge of water.

00:13:32 Every little pea goes to the top in a billow of foam

00:13:35 and gets a shampoo in the bargain.

00:13:41 The water separator drains the peas

00:13:43 and at the same time eliminates loose skins and broken pieces.

00:13:50 Now here's real magic.

00:13:52 The Colossus Grader, and what sleight of hand stunts it does.

00:13:57 Up to this point, peas of every size are mixed together

00:14:00 like a herd of sheep,

00:14:01 but that's no go when you're after flavor.

00:14:04 It takes skillful blending of just the right sizes

00:14:07 to give that natural June morning taste

00:14:09 so characteristic of the early garden blend.

00:14:12 No one size or sieve of peas can do it alone.

00:14:16 No hit or miss assortment of sizes can do it either.

00:14:19 So let's see what goes into the Del Monte early garden blend.

00:14:26 These peas sit for their portrait just as they came off the vines,

00:14:29 a jumbled collection of mixed-up sizes.

00:14:32 Many of them just don't have what it takes for Del Monte.

00:14:35 So let's put them through the grader

00:14:37 and sort them into their respective sizes.

00:14:40 Now as peas grow in size, their flavor undergoes marked changes.

00:14:45 These two young fellows are weak and watery.

00:14:48 Flavor hasn't yet had a chance to develop.

00:14:51 So Del Monte says, out you go.

00:14:55 As peas approach old age, their sugars change to starch.

00:14:59 So these overgrown ones, hard and starchy,

00:15:02 their flavor gone, are ruled out too.

00:15:07 It's the blending of those in-between sizes

00:15:09 that gives the true natural pea flavor.

00:15:12 And that's exactly what Del Monte takes for its early garden blend,

00:15:16 the pick of the pod.

00:15:20 Gee, I guess that's why they taste so good.

00:15:22 Why, of course.

00:15:23 You know, I can hear my mother now.

00:15:26 Feel the pods, son, she'd say.

00:15:28 Take just the best ones.

00:15:31 So I'd leave those skinny little flat ones that had no flavor

00:15:35 and the big old ones that were hard and starchy

00:15:38 and take just the prime plump ones like they do at that cannery.

00:15:43 Now were they good?

00:15:45 Yes, sir.

00:15:46 Those peas we had tonight were just like old times.

00:15:53 Yes, that's one important keynote to Del Monte flavor.

00:15:56 The Colossus Grader, at one fell swoop,

00:15:59 unravels those mixed up sizes and catalogs them for blending.

00:16:03 The little ones first, the big ones last.

00:16:05 And there you are.

00:16:07 So far, so good.

00:16:09 Our peas are nicely segregated into proper sizes.

00:16:13 But now another safeguard.

00:16:15 The Quality Grader gives them a double check for prime perfection.

00:16:19 In its continuous brine bath,

00:16:21 any hard, starchy peas sink to the bottom like pebbles in a duck pond.

00:16:26 The tender, sweet ones, being of lighter specific gravity,

00:16:29 bob up to the top and travel swiftly on to further proving grounds.

00:16:39 Still the elimination race goes on.

00:16:41 From the Quality Grader, the peas travel on to white conveyor belts,

00:16:44 where sharp-eyed experts armed with automatic pickers

00:16:47 are on the alert for broken or discolored peas.

00:16:53 This is just one more safeguard to the quality of that early garden blend.

00:17:05 After this careful working over,

00:17:07 the peas roll off the belt

00:17:09 and into hoppers that channel them into the blending blooms.

00:17:13 These bring together peas of the selected sizes,

00:17:16 not too young, not too old,

00:17:18 but just those exactly right in between sizes

00:17:21 to produce that natural, delicate, right-off-the-vine flavor.

00:17:26 There's no hit or miss, no guesswork in that famous Del Monte pack.

00:17:30 When these selected middle sizes come together in the final blend,

00:17:34 you get a balance of the finest flavor ever captured from a garden

00:17:37 on a dewy June morning.

00:17:41 Up to this point, it has been a long series of cold tubs and showers

00:17:45 for those fast-traveling peas.

00:17:47 Now in this long cylinder, the blancher,

00:17:50 they take their first hot water plunge,

00:17:52 winding up a cleaning job that started way back at the other end of the cannery.

00:17:59 And then, just as you do in your own shower of a morning,

00:18:02 the peas jump under that last cold spray on the shaker washer.

00:18:07 By now, every one of those ambitious young peas knows its bend places

00:18:12 and no mistake about it.

00:18:16 Comes now the final ordeal,

00:18:18 a rigid inspection for broken pieces or discolored specimens.

00:18:22 If a pea can get by this gauntlet by eliminators,

00:18:25 it can throw out its chest and say,

00:18:28 I am a world champion, I made good.

00:18:31 Why all this trouble, all this constant inspection

00:18:36 the careful selection and painstaking elimination?

00:18:39 Because Del Monte has determined that any product under its label

00:18:43 will be the best that nature, science, man and machines combined can produce.

00:18:48 That's the answer.

00:18:50 These are the prime peas of the harvest,

00:18:53 skillfully blended to produce that succulent right from the garden flavor,

00:18:57 uniform in color, uniformly tender,

00:19:00 as perfect as nature could make them.

00:19:02 It's the last lap now and those tender peas,

00:19:05 like a June morning peeking at you through a window,

00:19:08 are lined up at attention, awaiting their turn at the filling machine.

00:19:20 Just before the fill, each can gets a cleansing blast of live steam.

00:19:25 Canning is a fast tempo climax that happens faster than you can say,

00:19:29 Del Monte, and the filling machine, little less than human,

00:19:33 fills each can at the rapid fire rate of three to the second.

00:19:39 Then away they march like an endless parade of proud tin soldiers

00:19:43 into the automatic sealer where caps are crimped on

00:19:46 and they're ready for the cookers, huge pressure cookers,

00:19:49 checked and checked again by rigid time and temperature controls.

00:19:53 Only a short while before, the peas inside those cans

00:19:57 were growing in the fields.

00:19:59 In any man's language, that's travelin'.

00:20:05 Such is the story of Del Monte peas.

00:20:08 The story of quality started long before the seeds themselves

00:20:11 were planted in the soil.

00:20:13 A quality nurtured in the fields by scientific cultivation,

00:20:16 improved in the cannery by careful selection and exacting supervision,

00:20:20 and made available under the famous Del Monte label

00:20:24 to housewives everywhere.

00:20:26 From field to cannery, it's one continuous cycle

00:20:29 of unremitting care, of men, methods, and machines,

00:20:33 all dedicated to one ideal,

00:20:36 that Del Monte peas shall be none but the pick of the pod.

00:20:53 Del Monte Peas