My grandfather Lynn “Pat” Nichols and grandmother Iva started the Spinks Corners Fruit Exchange in the late 1920s and ran it for over 50 years.

Spinks Corners is located at the intersection of Napier Avenue and Park Road in Berrien County, MI just outside of Benton Harbor. My grandfather purchased the property on the south west corner from his mother's family the Merrills and built a business and home on it.

His first business was producing window sash weights. The makeshift foundry burnt down. He then bought a truck and drove local produce to markets in Chicago, which is the origin of the Spinks Corners Fruit Exchange name. As a teenager, he had worked in Benton Harbor loading fruit on barges that crossed Lake Michigan to Chicago. Trucks, and importantly a paved road around the southern end of the lake, were new enabling technologies. (I remember his excitement, and probable embellishment, as he told me about the time he stowed away on one of the barges to Chicago.) Through that work and his trucking venture, he experienced the challenges of shipping perishable fruit and the reality that you could only sell it once a year in season - forcing you to take the price you were given. Based on that, he saw an opportunity to make apple juice, or cider as he called it, as a product he could sell throughout the year and ship easily.

He also was what we would now call an angel investor - loaning money and investing in local businesses he knew well, including the first fruit cold storage warehouse in the region.

Moving apples from storage, the next step is washing them. Berrien County, MI was the fruit belt of the U.S. growing apples, cherries, and peaches. My grandfather bought apples and cherries from neighboring farmers.

After the apples were washed, they were mashed, then put into the press to make cider. The press is in the background of the right of this photo. By the time I was old enough to walk around the "plant" as my grandfather called it, he'd installed centrifugal presses.

The bottling line in action. This equipment was still in use in the 1980's when I spent a lot of time in the summers repairing equipment with my grandfather. Summers were dedicated to getting ready for the Fall apple harvest end juice pressing season. That's him on the left in his favorite outfit.

Capping gallon jugs.

Adding labels with what looks like a hand labeler.

Workers packing gallon jugs of cider into boxes to be shipped. The boxes were then taken to the warehouse across the alley from the plant. The "new" warehouse was built on the site of their first house after they built a new house on the far end of the farm property. I never mastered driving a lift truck.