The Grapes of Wrath

Hunger is a great motivator, it seems, and it's a hungry man and dog that drive down the mountain for a visit to America's produce stand, Salinas, California.

At 18 meters above sea level, the 22 square miles of Salinas California (the birthplace of John Steinbeck) produces 80% of the lettuce in the US, not to mention peppers, beans, broccoli and anything else that you can grow in rows. As one of the old men in the cantina where I ate lunch today said, "You could plant a rock in this soil and it'd grow." I doubt it's that easy, but this dense, rich earth does look fertile. As long as you have water, that is, which is a commodity in increasingly short supply in this part of the country. Apparently, the people who've built McMansions in the many new developments along the highway on the way here are demanding so much water for their neatly manicured lawns and hot tubs that there's less and less available for farming. But if there's one thing that Americans do well, it's pack productivity on to an acre of land, and despite using less water per hectare, these fields have been yielding more and more each year.

I don't have a lot to say about this trip into the fertile valley today, mostly because I've got a stir-fry full of fresh vegetables, garlic, ginger, plump avocados and jalepenos that would blow your sneakers off and locally-made balsamic vinegar almost ready on the stove. I'm having a malt-based aperitif while I type this.

The main thing I came away with after my trip today and the fantastic enchiladas in mole sauce at the roadside cantina full of farm laborers who had finished their day of work at 1pm (I can't even imagine what time they started this morning) is that the Mexican immigrants who come across the border legally and illegally to do backbreaking work for low pay are a lot like the families I saw growing up on the Northwest Side of Chicago. From the men and women who get up early to work long hours to the schoolchildren in neatly-pressed uniforms walking hand-in-hand to the Catholic School, these were people I recognized. They may have accents, but there were more than a few of the parents and grandparents of my schoolmates at St Genevieve's that had accents, too. The Catholic iconography is everywhere in this community, from the dashboards of cars to the murals on the walls of farm buildings, the Blessed Virgin is everywhere, and you know what? I never noticed that she looks Mexican before.

For those that choose to spend their time watching cable "news" shows, you'd think that the influx of these people is the worst thing that could possibly happen to the US. But when you see these people, these families, these kids and their lives, it's hard to see this recent wave of immigration as anything but the continuation of a tradition that brought my grandpa here from Sicily and my Mom's parents from Southern Italy. If America changes for the worse, it'll be less because of the people who risk their lives and safety sneak here just to pick the vegetables that are sold at Dominick's and Jewel than it will be because of the people with hate in their hearts.

Wouldn't you know it, on my way back up Hwy 1 to the mountain, all I could find on the radio were bitter men, angry that these people were coming to America. Tell you what, if I had to pick a neighbor, it would be the tired folks who I saw in Salinas today before it would be those men on the radio.

Sorry for the sermonette. I've got some veggies to scarf down. Next week, I think I'll drive down to Monterey and Big Sur, to watch the surfers and walk Mozart on the beach. Tonight, it's shaping up to be a beaut of a sunset.