A Tranquil Place Where Work Is Far From the Pits

With wooden tongs, Vilma Velis plucks a stuffed colossal from a tray and places it--pimiento side out--in a glass jar. She packs olives the old fashioned way: by hand.

Now, martini devotees may tell you that the olive is strictly incidental. And a machine-packed olive never ruined a self-respecting tamale pie. But at Vilma’s place--E. Waldo Ward in Sierra Madre--it’s is a matter of pride.

“Place-packing is kind of a dying art,” laments Jeff Ward, 27, Waldo’s great-grandson. It is, as they say, not cost-effective. And those machines can toss olives any which way into a jar.

But a machine can’t pack a spiral triple. That’s Vilma’s favorite--swirls of pimiento-stuffed olives and almond-stuffed olives and onion-stuffed olives in pretty rows.

Everything about E. Waldo Ward’s place is, happily, of another era--the 1890s, to be exact, when the first Waldo bought the property and planted orange trees.

On any given day, his grandson, Richard, who lives in the home Waldo built in 1903, might be found stirring a big vat of marmalade in the kitchen of the cannery just behind the house.

E. Waldo Ward specialties--many of which, privately labeled, are sold in upscale gourmet shops--include brandied cherries, sweet pickled apricots and green tomato pickle. Olives account for about one-fourth of total sales.

But Vilma does only olives. She can fill a half-gallon jar, olive by olive, in 10 minutes flat. For her, weighing each jar after packing is mostly a formality. She’s been at E. Waldo Ward for seven years, the last two as an olive person, and is rarely off by so much as one olive.

And she knows a bad olive when she sees one. With the flick of a wrist, she tosses split specimens into a gallon jar. They’ll be sold to restaurants.

Vilma, 44, became an olive packer sort of by coincidence, having previously cleaned offices at Dodger Stadium and worked in a burrito factory. A friend of a friend who’s a Ward packer told her about the job.

The olives begin their journey in Spain. Bathed in heavy brine, they are shipped to E. Waldo Ward in 55-gallon plastic drums. Dipping a big perforated pan into a drum, Vilma scoops out some olives, rinses them and takes them on a tray to her worktable.

As she packs, she may nudge an errant pimiento into place with a gloved thumb. Each jar is a work of art, with not so much as an air bubble escaping Vilma’s notice as she fills the jars with lighter brine.

It’s a good job, she’ll tell you. She enjoys the quiet, the pastoral setting with its 1902 red barn. And olives aren’t boring. There are olives stuffed with tiny Holland onions and olives stuffed with jalapenos . . .

But, Vilma will tell you, she likes her olives “just plain,” please.

Forever ‘Boys’

A few of the “boys” got together the other night in Hollywood to remember when a groundbreaking play about homosexuals opened off-Broadway.

They were “The Boys in the Band,” young actors who put their careers on the line in 1968 to do gay roles. Now the “boys”--those who survived--are middle-aged. And, in the era of AIDS, playwright Mart Crowley’s sub-themes of conflict and self-hatred seem to some to be less valid.

Four of the nine original “boys,” as well as director Robert Moore, have died of complications from AIDS.

And some critics now view “Boys,” with its one-liners such as “You show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse,” as a dusty, and rather nasty, relic.

So here’s the Fountain Theater staging a 25th anniversary revival--but with a twist. All proceeds from the show, which runs through May 9, go to Equity Fights AIDS. The cast, crew and playwright have donated their talents.

On a recent night, the theater was dark and Crowley and some of his “boys” were invited to a reunion. Peter White (“Alan”) was there, and Reuben Greene (“Bernard”) and Michael Lipton, who played “Harold” in the 1969 L.A. production.

Director Stephen Sachs read a letter from Laurence Luckinbill (the original “Hank”), who was in New York. He wrote, “ ‘The Boys in the Band’ spoke directly to the heart of the middle class . . . suddenly gays, queers and homosexuals had faces . . . “

Those at the reunion told sad stories, and funny stories, and scary stories.

White said he and others were dropped by their agents after taking the “Boys” roles and were told, “You’ll never work again.” They did, but they lost lucrative commercials.

And Crowley said that recently he has felt the sting of political correctness. True, he wrote lines such as “Faggots are worse than women about their age” and “You show me Oscar Wilde in a cowboy suit and I’ll show you a gay caballero.”

But, he said, there was balance among his characters and, in essence, his was not a gay play but a play about human relationships and emotions, about a “family.”

Someone asked: In the time of AIDS, should gay writers be writing about anything but AIDS? Is it OK now to laugh about being gay?

Michael Van Duser of Equity Fights AIDS replied that laughter is still the best medicine for us all. Fountain Theater producer Jane Macdonald concurred. Every night, she said, “People are moved and people are healed” by “Boys.”

Crowley recalled asking director Moore on opening night at New York’s Theater Four if he thought the audience would laugh. Moore replied, “They’ve been laughing at fags since Aristophanes.”

Jeb Stuart, one of the “new boys” (he’s “Emory” at the Fountain), spoke from the audience: Today, he said, gay actors “are able to play accountants who happen to be, doctors who happen to be” because of these actors who took a chance 25 years ago.

White, who now lives in Los Angeles, told of opening “Boys” in London after 1,001 New York performances:

“Can you imagine of all the plays (at which) to sing “God Save the Queen”?

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SEEN: A sign at Apex Aquariums in Culver City offering a lifetime guarantee: “If the fish expires, so does our guarantee.”