The University of Pacific Tillie Talk Week

What fun to learn so much from the folks you are teaching. Often, I am told historical tales as good as I am sharing.

I don't do lectures; I do hiSTORY chats. Stories about the past. Gossip even. The human connections of then and how they relate to NOW is what is of interest to us. Otherwise hand me a blanket and I'll softly snore through that PowerPoint blah-blah-blah...even if I'm holding the microphone.

What to do when you need pineapple and Hawaii was bombed in 1941? Buy a few decommissioned army ships, build pineapple canneries on them, set them out to sea off the coast of Mexico and can Mexican pineapple...until the Mexican government catches on and arrests you for piracy, of course. That little dingy I'm pointing to, was used as the conveyor from land to ship full of pineapple. The ladies are on the ship packing into cans. The two gents (behind me) are arrested in a most congenial fashion at the best hotel until Tillie bails them out.

Before Tillie had any idea of California, agriculture, or tomatoes, she gave the Ziegfield Follies a shot. She met Fanny Brice, Eddie cantor, Sophie Tucker, Marx Brothers, and everybody.

Having no stage talent did not deter Tillie. She was really hoping for a tall, dark, handsome, wealthy man to save her from Brooklyn, NY tenement poverty. We all wish to be a Disney Princess at least once. Tillie met the Prince... but she was going to have to save herself through continuing education and a career first in wholesale groceries then as a TOP STOCKBROKER on Wall Street, until that nasty little crash in October of 1929.

And she Did save herself. Tillie Lewis: The Tomato Queen explains HOW she created fortune from misfortune time and again.

Tillie Lewis brought the San Marzano tomato for major production into America during the 1930's Smoot-Hawley Tarriff times and made a mega-fortune by always adding to what she canned, designed, created, built. She was the first woman to...nearly everything in business.

If you are eating Italian and they don't have San Marzano tomatoes (pomodoros) in the sauce, it isn't the real deal.

Google it. It has GOT to be San Marzano.

I found these bottles just yesterday at Williams-Sonoma shops and SEEDS to grow San Marzanos at Home Depot. You need hot and sunny for the San Marzano to grow, which is why Tillie chose Stockton, California. I'm sure you can find a hot sunny spot.

Me and some of the girls at University of Pacific's Janet Leigh Theatre loaded with Janet's gowns, photos, trinkets, and this evening Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis's Palm Springs neighbor, Tillie Lewis.

This is U.O.P. where Harrison Ford snuck out of windows to avoid enamored co-eds as Indiana Jones. It's just lovely.

A nice gift for the holidays? A good book (say Tillie Lewis: The Tomato Queen) , San Marzano Tomato Sauces, a bottle of red wine and a reminder to your TILLIE that she is the real deal Wonder Woman who can do anything she works to be.

A little TILLIE ADVICE: Research your goal/idea, ask HOW not just why, provide what people NEED (more than want), never give up on yourself, No and Can't Do not belong in your vocabulary, and treat GOOD people who help you along the way GREAT.

Love and Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and New Year,

Kyle Elizabeth Wood