A look back at Basic Vegetable Products
If orchardist and prune drying company owner Ed Uhl had not gotten over his worry about onion dust contaminating his prunes and making them taste like onions, Jack and William Hume may not have established Basic Vegetable Products in Vacaville.
Jack Hume still chuckled over that moment 50 years later when the Vacaville community celebrated Hume and Basic’s 50th anniversary in Vacaville, according to a 1982 Vacaville Reporter news story.
The founder of Basic was looking for a Central Valley location with a dry climate for processing his Stockton- grown onions when he met Uhl and persuaded him to rent Hume his prune dehydrator for the off-season.
In the first year after Uhl and the Humes made the deal, Basic managed to produce more than 40,000 pounds of dried onions and garlic.
Moving
In May 1939, a Vacaville Reporter article announced Basic was moving its operation from the Uhl ranch to the shipping shed of the Vacaville Fruit Growers Association on Davis and Stevenson streets.
“The new location gives the company better railroad access and large warehouse space to store the vegetables used in the manufacture of the products processed, which are shipped to all parts of the country and foreign countries,” the May 28, 1939 article read.
By 1940, Basic’s harddriving marketing of their dehydrated onion products had made it a success. It could be used with canned goods such as stew,
pork and beans or corned beef hash, according to a Basic’s company history.
It was also the time when war was raging in Europe and the Army was getting ready for the eventuality that America may get involved.
Assistant Quartermaster General, Col. Paul Logan of the Army’s quartermaster Corps, was inspecting food manufacturers when he inspected Basic’s dehydrating operation and came away impressed with what he saw, according to the company history.
“He decided that Basic should be a primary source of dried onion and garlic for the armed forces,” the history stated. “Supplying the military was so crucial, he stated, that if Jack decided to enlist, the Army would immediately detail him back to Vacaville to run the plant.”
T he Army on ly requested one change, that Basic supply large pieces of dehydrated onion instead of the onion powder. Basic responded by re- engineering its processes to provide the dried onion chips.
Basic became part of the massive nation-wide readiness effort that ranged from conducting extensive militar y exercises such as the Louisiana Maneuvers of 1941 and instituting the draft in September 1940 to retooling industries such as Basic to be able to switch quickly from peacetime to wartime production.
The war
By September 1941, Basic’s work was impressive enough for Secretary of State Edward Stettinius to visit the plant and personally thank the company for its role in supplying the military.
After America entered the war on Dec. 7, 1941, the Army contracted with Basic to supply not only the U. S. armed forces, but also its allies through LendLease.
The Davis Street plant was now pumping out millions of pounds a year and employing nearly a thousand workers.
Basic’s product a space saver that the militar y prized. Basic would take in 25 railroad carloads of onions into the plant which, after the dehydration process, would become one carload shipped back out.
The finished product was apparently a hit with the troops.
Histor ian Kristin Delaplane Conti quoted one lieutenant in New Guinea as saying “it is possible to use (dried onions) for lunch and dinner on canned sausages, meat, stew, etc., and no matter how bad the stuff is, it always tastes good with the onions.”
In 1944, Basic processed 10 million pounds of dried vegetables and more than half the dehydrated onion in the United States, according to the company history.
Award
In March of the same year, Basic Vegetable was recognized for its work and was awarded the prestigious Army-Navy E Award for excellence.
The award was first created in 1906 to honor excellence in gunnery. It was later used to recognize outstanding performance in engineering and communications. After Pearl Harbor, it was awarded to organizations that excelled in producing equipment and supplies for the military.
The ceremony was held on March 31, 1944 with the Vacaville Reporter stating “thousands predicted here to witness impressive program.” The Chamber of Commerce encouraged local businesses to close that day so more people could attend the event.
Award was accepted by William Hume and the event was carried by five radio stations. Col. Arthur Stanley, director of procurement for the California Quartermaster Depot in Oakland presented Basic officials with the pennant.
“You men and women of the Basic Vegetable Products Company are making a heartening contribution to victory and have reason to be proud of the record you are setting,” Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson said.
The pennant was raised over the plant by US Marine Corps color guard and the Vacaville Drum Corps while the 261 st US Army Band played “The Caissons Go Rolling Along’, according to a Basic company history. A lapel “E” pin was given to every employee.
This was the first of three E Awards that the plant was to garner during the war.
The end of the war in September 1945 meant the abrupt end of a successful business with the Army.
“The government was left with a large inventory of dried onion, which it was planning to dump on the US market,” according to the company history. “Basic Vegetable offered to buy back all the stock at the same price that the government paid for it.”
The plan was to repackage the onions and sell them as ‘ Magic Onions’ through H. J. Heinz Company, largely to restaurants, but that market unexplainably collapsed.
“We had this large repurchase from the military and no institutional market for Heinz, and we didn’t know why,” said Jack Hume in the history. “It was a disaster.”
The brothers knuckled down to retool their sales efforts to buyers. They cut costs by not taking a salary themselves and trimmed Basic to the bare bones until business started picking up again.
Basic was further helped along when the Army started looking for firms that could dehydrate surplus potatoes and make them palatable, making them taste like something other than glue.
In 1948, Basic won the contract to dehydrate potatoes that would be shipped into Berlin which was blockaded by the Soviets and “got us back on our feet and out of debt,” Jack Hume said in the history.
More contracts
The outbreak of the Korean War got Basic more contracts to make potato powder.
Basic remained a big part of Vacaville until the plant was relocated to King City in 1986. An ice rink, Brendan Theaters, several restaurants and commercial businesses now stand on the site.
William Hume died in 1976 and Jack Hume died in 1991. The community’s monument to Jack Hume, Jack Hume Grove, with its redwoods, iris and California poppies, can be found on the bike path between the end of Butcher Road and Lagoon Valley Park.