I See by the Papers...

It's said "there are no second acts in American lives" but Luther Burbank had several of them. In 1912 alone, he had two.

Burbank was a man driven by a single simple goal: He wanted to spend all his time crossbreeding plants in hopes of discovering something that was prettier, tastier, hardier – or might be as significant as his discovery of the russet potato. To do that he needed financial security as well as freedom to concentrate on his work, although for most of his career he had neither. He hated running a wholesale seed business, which was no guarantee of a steady income even though the public revered him as the "plant wizard." He came to loathe his adoring fans who continually pestered and distracted him in Santa Rosa, wanting to shake hands and boast about their lovely zinnias back home. Oh, if he could just unload the business side on someone else, and/or have some nice people award him a wad of money.




The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com. - Jeff Elliott