City Lights:

It may be a little fitting that I work for a newspaper, because, in a way, I’m the descendant of a classified ad. In the 19th century, my great-great-grandmother — recently widowed with a young son — answered a newspaper posting from a man who had bought 300 acres in California and was busy planting an orange grove.

The man asked for a farm wife in the ad, and after she sent him her picture, he mailed her back a railroad ticket. Years later, Jan and Dean would describe California’s beach scene as “two girls for every boy,” but evidently, there was a time when a man literally had to advertise out of state for a woman.

My great-great-grandparents had what most people today would describe as a hard life. Nowadays, we’re used to shopping centers lining every block, cities blending instantly into others.

But even in the calm Orange County suburbs, some people still practice the art of roughing it. Witness Clarence “Chad” Hanna, an 89-year-old Fountain Valley resident whose front and back yards operate as a mini-produce farm, and whose garage might pass for a general store in the Wild West.

I heard about Hanna through Joanne Rasmussen, the woman spearheading the effort to bring a community vegetable garden to Huntington Beach. After our interview, Rasmussen suggested I visit Hanna’s garden, which he and his wife have nurtured since moving into their home on Olive Circle in 1964.

Arriving at the home, I was met with a front yard full of fruit trees — including apple, apricot and avocado — and an open garage full of containers of screws, clothing, baseball caps and, needless to say, preserved food. Then I was met by Hanna himself — a strong-looking man for 89, lean and robust in a cap and working clothes. He started by giving me a tour of his front garden, then showed me the bounty in his garage.

Hanna grew up poor on a farm in Texas, and has retained the belief all his life that every object is valuable. He showed me a handle of a broken mop, which he held onto in case anyone needed a piece of wood. Hanna and his wife give plenty of things to friends and neighbors, and keep the garage stocked in case people come by.

“I’m a saver,” he said. “If I think it’s of any value, I save it.”

That’s a frontier mentality, and I saw even more of it when he led me through his garden out back. In this modest space in a cul-de-sac, the Hannas grow enough produce to keep them fed for much of the year: herbs, peaches, cucumbers, corn, beans, even bananas. Anyone who saw “Food, Inc.,” the terrifying new documentary about chemical- enhanced farming, would take solace in a homegrown garden like this.

Inside the house, the Hannas enjoy many conveniences of modern, but that do-it-yourself attitude prevails. When Hanna was a child, his family grew their own food and eked out a living by selling cotton. Electricity and running water were faraway luxuries. Most people crave comfort and efficiency, so society constantly gets more streamlined over time. In this day and age, it’s easy to forget how self-reliant people can be. But Hanna remembers.

“The good thing about being on a farm is that we grew,” he told me. “We never had money, but we were never hungry.”

As we spoke, he guided me through the paths of his garden in back, stopping occasionally to offer me a ripe fruit from the vine. By the time I left, my shoes were brown with dust and my hands sticky with juice. In all my time as a reporter, I had never minded being dirty less.

City Editor MICHAEL MILLER can be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com .