Canto CDXXV: The Cure of the Calamansi

Gentle cabrones:

We bought the calamansi tree sometime between 2012 — when we moved into our home — and 2016, when the California Department of Agriculture put Orange County in a citrus quarantine zone to try and stave off the spread of Asian citrus psyllid, a disease that kills any citrus tree that contracts it.

It wasn’t NelsCYN who bought the calamansi for us, because she got us an Indio mandarinquat from Costco back when she used to work there and before the quarantine went into place. I’m might have gotten the calamansi from Lowe’s, because they always pop up with random cool fruit trees, but it was probably from Laguna Hills Nursery in SanTana because their selection is even better.

Whenever and wherever we bought it, I do remember we had big plans.

It’s one of my honey‘s favorite citrus fruits, and the pride of the Philippines. The size and shape of a slightly squished bánh cam. Eaten like a kumquat. Intensive, immediate sourness that fades into a peppery sting that lingers on sweetness. Squeezed into juice, turned into dessert or made into marinade for adobo, calamansi is an unheralded hero of Southern California citrus.

We put ours in a container because our house is small and it began to grow. It didn’t give any fruit the first year because it was young, but the calamansi blossomed the second year. It was getting so big that I needed to lean a stick against the trunk so it could grow straight. I told my honey to not remove the stick even though she complained it looked ugly. We put a rock in the shape of a heart at the base, and I watered and fertilized and waited.

One day, I found the tree at a 45-degree angle. My honey had removed the stick. The trunk’s bark had snapped, revealing the heartwood. I propped it backed up, put the trunk bark back in its place, put up another stick, wrapped some rope around it and prayed.

The calamansi didn’t die. It just stayed withered over the years while our other citrus flourished.

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Our kumquat gives twice a year. Our Indio mandarinquat, which gives fruits shaped and as big as a chicken egg and is sweeter than kumquats, is 10 feet high now – I need to cap it. We have two limes: a tequilero and another one that an Alta Baja regular gave me because he said it was dying but which now gives big, beautiful Persian limes. Bearss lemon and a blood orange tree that always gives — but not as much as I wish it did — and a finger lime that’s impossible to prune because it’s so spiny.

The calamansi did next to nothing.

It wouldn’t give me more than 10 fruits a year. What it did give tended to be mushy and flavorless. But I did not want to give up on the calamansi because I couldn’t — not just because it’s my personality to save but because this tree was probably it.

Asian citrus psyllid is the White Walkers of citrus, ravaging orchards for over a century. Citrus farmers have spent tens of millions of dollars to try eradicate it along with federal, state, local, regional, county and even world governments – nothing.

Southern California’s citrus quarantine zone continues to grow. In September, state agriculture authorities extended it to Camp Pendleton, meaning all of Orange County is now in it. You can still keep your citrus tree if you have one, but you’re not supposed to take your fruits outside of the quarantine zone and you cannot buy trees at nurseries anymore.

If you’re tree is affected and the state finds out, they’ll rip it out immediately down to the roots — that’s how we lost our massive Thai lime in 2018. There is no known cure and there is little hope one will come in the foreseeable future. So I kept fertilizing and watering our calamansi even as it suffered, sporadic bad fruit be damned.

This past year wasn’t the rainiest of years, but it was a very humid summer. The calamansi flowered once again like crazy, but I paid little attention to it as I harvested our bountiful tomato crop. As late summer came and bees pollinated the flowers, I waited for them to fall off like they had in the past.

They finally didn’t.

One day, you sprout seeds; the next day, you’re harvesting. One day, you’re hanging out with your best friend during lunch at Anaheim High trying to impress girls singing Beatles songs while he plays the guitar; the next day, he and his wife have their second child. One day, I realized we were gonna have a huge crop of calamansi if they ripened.

If.

I was gone this past week in Madison and Chicago – you’ll be hearing more about my adventures soon. When I left, all the calamansi were green with the slightest streaks of orange. After I arrived and walked Cosmo, I took him to our backyard to check on the tree.

I counted at least 100 calamansi — and that’s after my honey said she had already brought a bagful to Alta Baja, where they proved an immediate hit. She’s probably gonna make a marmalade out of them.

I bit into one and it jolted me out of my jet lag. The heartwood of the calamansi is still visible — but the tree is green and healthy, and it’s flowering again.

If this is the only year our calamansi offers us fruit, that’s fine. Tending to something that’s a lost cause usually doesn’t pay off. But we do it because of the chance that our dedication will pay off. And when it does happen, we rejoice in knowing that our work wasn’t for naught – that care can transform. That hope never dies. 

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Seen at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chicanx/e & Latinx/e Studies library. La Cucaracha cartoonista Lalo Alcaraz says it happened because when he lectured on campus some years ago, he made fun of cheese curds.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I only know that I will maintain what I believe to be true in my own universe, and as an individual I will give in to nothing.” — Albert Camus

LISTENING: “De Contrabando,” Jenni Rivera. So on the Saturday before I left for my trip, I walked Cosmo around 11 at night and wouldn’t you know it: a house party was going on strong and a group of women were singing along to their friend doing karaoke to this torch song — what do Gen Z kids know about La Diva de La Banda? So I streamed it since I hadn’t heard the song in ages since La Ranchera doesn’t get more modern than Las Azucenas — fuck, was Jenni a talent (although the track didn’t need a backing vocal on the chorus). One of the true achievements of my career was writing two of the four or so English-language deep dives written about Jenni while she was alive — and her telling me at the Fonovisa offices in Woodland Hills when I was going to interview her for Latina that my piece on her for the Infernal Rag was the best thing anyone had ever written about her AND that it was always a dream of hers to appear on the cover of Latina…and I was the one making it happen. Gone too soon. Hence included in Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly Radiola of Randomness YouTube songlist, where I’ve included every song I’ve ever featured in a canto — give it a spin!

READING: “Fullerton’s Metrolink Station Is the City’s Past, Present and Pulse”: Joel Beers, along with Patty Marsters (Canto CDXIII) is one of just two people who were listed as contributors in the Infernal Rag from the first issue until the end. His main beat was theater, but Joel could write prose about rugs if need be. Underrated as a writer about place — I once told him to do A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers about the Santa Ana River and he did it — so I’m happy to read his series on Orange County’s 11 Metrolink stations. Brilliant idea, brilliant writing — Beers!

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo Events  

Thursday, Nov. 13, 6:30 p.m.: Truly a night you don’t want to miss at the Frida Cinema: a zoot suit fashion show coordinated by Fullerton School District trustee Vanesa Estrella (whose family runs the iconic El Pachuco shop in Fullerton) followed by a screening of Luis Valdez’s scintillating film adaptation of his incredible play Zoot Suit, followed by a Q & A with me about OC’s own pachuco history (although Muzeo, the Anacrime museum that’s sponsoring this misspelled my last name TWICE). At the Frida Cinema, 305 E. Fourth St., #100, SanTana. A CHEAP $16, so buy tickets here!

Gustavo in the News

“Trump’s Murderous Policy Against Venezuela Is Part of a Bloody History”: That august liberal-progressive warhorse Common Dreams shouts out a columna of mine.

“The Cinerama Dome closed during the pandemic. Will it reopen soon?”: A Los Angeles Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

“Drop in the bucket”: Hanna Raskin’s indispensable The Food Section shouts out my slam against the New York Times from long ago regarding its coverage of Vietnamese food in the United States.

“The historian who won’t let Orange County hide its past“: Clockwork Coker writes about me anew for UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology (for a blast from the past about me from him, check out this Sacramento News & Review piece from back in the day!)

“Gustavo Arellano”: Grokipedia’s take on me is bizarre, facetiously smart, and error-riddled — but sure, AI is great.

“A key voter group just told Trump 'what happens if he doesn’t listen'“: Man, that was a quick take on my columna considering my next latest columna just published!

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all — from a hotel room in Madison, Wisconsin!

“OC Federal Election Monitors are Not New”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary gives the sordid history of Curt Pringle’s initial brush with infamy.

“Building Communities of Care and Resistance”: My appearance a few weeks ago on a local Madison Chicano radio show on WORT, whose logo is just like that of KLOS!

“From far away, an L.A. couple grapples with all-too-familiar debate after Dodgers win”: My latest L.A. Times columna features my dear friends Carolina Sarmiento and Revel Sims. KEY QUOTE: “That’s where the rub came for Sarmiento and other Dodgers fans. For them, the actions and inactions of the team this year have been indefensible.”

“From the ballot box to the streets, Latinos are blowing the whistle on Trump’s reign”: My next latest L.A. Times columna makes sense of Latinos repudiating GOP candidates and causes across the country this past week. KEY QUOTE: “This week Latinos sent a loud message: You had your chance, y nada.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!