Trekking on my mountain bike along the Coyote Creek this week, I
passed through a gauntlet of gold bordering the trail near the
percolation ponds just north of Morgan Hill.
Winter rains and the spring-like sunshine we’ve enjoyed recently
had caused an immense patch of mustard plants to burst forth in a
blaze of radiant glory.
Trekking on my mountain bike along the Coyote Creek this week, I passed through a gauntlet of gold bordering the trail near the percolation ponds just north of Morgan Hill.
Winter rains and the spring-like sunshine we’ve enjoyed recently had caused an immense patch of mustard plants to burst forth in a blaze of radiant glory. The bright yellow flower heads dancing in the breeze and their heavy fragrance perfuming the air made me recall the hours I’d spent in my growing-up years hoeing down this “weed.” It was my regular garden chore in March and April.
In the spring, mustard stalks are tender, and easy to hack. In hot summer, however, the stalks toughen as they dry. I still recall painful hand blisters from cutting down mustard weeds with a hoe in June and July.
My dad once told me I could thank Father Junipero Serra for those blisters. The legend goes Serra and his Franciscan padres who founded California’s missions brought the mustard seeds from Spain. As they walked the Indian trail they named “El Camino Real,” they’d scatter seeds to the right and left.
After the rains, the padres could travel along the El Camino Real through a trail of flowers. One account described it “a ribbon of gold.” The beautiful mustard plants distinctly marked the path connecting Serra’s “Rosary of Missions” that dotted Alta California from San Diego to Sonoma.
Coastal breezes over time blew the seeds, so now there’s hardly any wild California terrain where you won’t find mustard plants. Note especially for the next month or so along U.S. Highway 101 – which roughly parallels El Camino Real – patches of mustard gold flowers highlighting the hills.
That sight might suggest the colorful bounty Spain’s missionaries enjoyed. Coastal California’s history of mustard doesn’t end with the Spanish missions. It next takes on a very real South Valley connection. In the late decades of the 19th century, this area served as home for a Chinese fellow known locally as “Jim Jacks.” (The Asian farm worker also went by the nickname of “China Jim,” according to the memoir “Early Days at the Mission San Juan Bautista” by Isaac Mylar.)
Jacks grew famous as “the Mustard King” of California. He was a kind-hearted and hard-working man who helped many needy farming families in San Benito County get through hard financial times during the 1870s and 1880s. And he used the mustard weed growing abundantly throughout South Valley to create his benevolence.
The Flint-Bixby Company had hired Jacks to poison the squirrel pests burrowing the San Juan Valley land it leased to farmers. Jacks also cooked for the hired hands who the company employed. The gentleman lived in a small cabin on the straight dirt road linking San Juan Bautista to Hollister.
During the wheat harvest season every year, local farmers faced the headache of removing wild mustard growing among their grain. Using sickles much like the Grim Reaper’s, the hired hands cut the mustard – sometimes shoulder high – along with the grain. (Perhaps this laborious activity was the origin of the phrase “can’t cut the mustard.”) When the grain was threshed, a cleaner separated the weeds from the wheat and threw the mustard debris into large piles to dispose of later.
Jim Jacks saw real gold among the mustard’s golden flowers tossed off by farmers. With their permission, he’d flail the blossoms, knocking seeds onto a canvas spread on the ground. He’d collect the seed and sell it to local stores and restaurants. Local cowboys especially loved spicy-hot mustard.
Jacks often traveled around the South Valley area in his one-horse cart carrying a large wooden box. In this he kept bagged candy, oranges and apples, and small containers of cookies. He’d purchased these goodies using his mustard seed money. He frequently drove to San Juan Bautista or Hollister to share these sweets with local children. Sometimes he’d even present coins to the kiddies – as much as 50 cents or a dollar. Big money in those long-ago days.
Jacks especially enjoyed making a spring-time tradition of buying a 10-pound bucket of candy and, on the last day of school, taking it to the local “schoolmarm” to distribute among the children.
Mylar recalls Jacks’ generosity with South Valley adults. At Thanksgiving time, he drove through San Juan Bautista and presented his town neighbors with mincemeat, raisins, candies and nuts for their fall feast.
Jack’s soul made him share the bounty from his mustard seed money with the poor. “I have known of him,” Mylar writes, “hiring a four-horse team and driver to take him to Hollister at which town he bought enough flour for a load, had it driven back to San Juan and distributed among the laboring men’s families. On another occasion he bought three hundred sacks of potatoes all of which he gave away.”
When his final years approached, Jacks decided to return to his Asian homeland to find his eternal resting spot. I imagine many moist eyes among his South Valley friends the day he made his final round of goodbyes. His years of mustard-seed generosity made him a fondly remembered old man.
In our own modern age, Jacks is still remembered in South Valley’s mission town. Citizens recently began a project to preserve “China Jim’s” dilapidated old cabin as a memorial to his compassionate and unselfish spirit.
Jesus once compared the kingdom of heaven to a tiny mustard seed.
Perhaps, he meant, the small kindnesses we show each other might not seem like much on the surface, but scattered in the wind they grow and multiply and create beauty in our lives and for future generations. The seeds of kind deeds carry inside them a kingdom of beauty to enrich our souls. If you see a field of gold during the next few weeks, consider this little lesson presented to us by Jim Jacks, the Mustard King of South Valley.
