I was born, grew up and still live in the most beautiful spot on earth. Anyone visiting our Napa Valley knows exactly what I'm talking about. Few, however, know that it was every bit as wonderful before it looked like it does today.

When I was born in 1951, livestock and dairy dominated the landscape, a $9.5 million business. Prunes were king of the fruit production garnering $170 per ton. Walnuts were everywhere and fetched a whopping $440 a ton. At the time, a ton of wine grapes were going for $65, bringing in $2.2 million a year. Today the cows are essentially gone, prunes and walnuts have been relegated to a few backyards and those 35,000 tons of wine grapes have tripled and are selling for over $2,000 a ton, which translates to $200 million annually.

A lot of what's here today was here half a century ago, although its place in our day-to-day lives is different. The spillway on Conn Dam (or, as it is properly known, Lake Hennessy), for instance. Today it's called the Napa Valley Steelhead Project; growing up we all knew it as the "spillway" or "the kiddies' hole." The Department of Fish and Game would plant trout there during the trout season and if you were a kid 12 or under you could fish for hours on end. My mother would drop me off on her way to work and pick me up on her way home. I'd spend the day fishing with friends, eating bag lunches and sometimes even catching fish.

Strangers didn't exist. They hadn't been invented yet. Any adult was a person you could trust. Adults seemed to believe they had a responsibility to help every kid in town. Just like today, dads, moms, uncles, and interested grown-ups would devote countless hours as coaches, referees, umpires, score keepers, announcers, chaperones or drivers to ensure we had proper supervision, guidance and role models.

It was easier for a young person to get a job when I was growing up. And I don't believe that any of the store proprietors or ranch owners made a tremendous profit on our labor. They just seemed to understand that kids needed to learn how to work and to make a few dollars. It was their contribution to a better community and a better younger generation.

My most memorable jobs were picking prunes for Lowell Eddington and Bob Keig. Both were great bosses and the work was fun, if not always enjoyable! Both ranches are now vineyards producing some of the best Rutherford Bench fruit in the region. Later I worked for Lloyd Stice at Napa Milling Company, a local feed and seed store in St. Helena. I swept the floor, unloaded and stacked hay bales and hauled hay and sacks of feed out to customers' cars and trucks. I was one of many high school students who Lloyd employed, all getting much more from the job than the company got from us.

Next I was stocking shelves for Joe Brown at his auto parts store and pumping gas for Leo Acquistapace at the new Richfield station in St. Helena. Leo taught me how to do a lube, oil and filter job as well as mount tires and tune-up an engine. Well, Richfield service stations went the way of the prunes and I don't think you tune cars anymore … you just change the computer chip. Nonetheless, a young person had spending money and got a good sense of how to work. What some call physical labor was enough to make you realize that college was a pretty good option.

Weekend and after-school jobs notwithstanding, most of my friends and I played sports. In St. Helena we had the Carpy Gang before Little League came to our area. Mr. Carpy not only started the program, which included football, basketball, baseball and boxing, but also coached and supported the team out of his own pocket. His son Chuck took it over and ran the gang for years after his dad passed away.

This was a wonderful time and lessons of great and lasting value were learned. Change has descended on our Valley as it does everywhere, but one thing is certain: The people who make up our community today still care about it as much as all those who helped shape my life.

U.S. Representative Mike Thompson represents California's First Congressional District, which includes Napa and six other Northern California counties. He is a native of St. Helena.