 On The Line -- Issue 624 -- March 2, 2007  Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
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On The Line -- Issue 624 -- March 2, 2007 Online News and Views of Life in San Benito County with Herman Wrede Published by HollisterOnline.com -- Copyright 1995-2008 HollisterOnline.com
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Most Central Coast transplants from the Midwest and East Coast acknowledge that the weather here played a large part in their decision to switch locales. Some even maintain that it was the only motive.
Those who make the change are overwhelmed by the first winter they experience in the Golden State. We had known logically that people in most of California often go about in shirt sleeves or without sweaters in January and February. They find that when they are actually doing it that they only thought they had known it. To feel the warmth of the sun on one's back and shoulders at a time when one would gave been shoveling snow back home is a revelation. But, like everything else, we take mild weather for granted the longer we live here. Sometimes when the temperature dips to 42 in February, we grumble about the cold, forgetting that back in Ohio or New Hampshire we would have cheered those temperatures. That nearly week-long cold snap in California in January hit transplanted Midwesterners and Easterners especially hard. They had thought they were done forever with icicles on the waterspout and frozen birdbaths. Snow is welcomed at ski resorts in the northern part of the state, and most children delight to see it fall because of the prospect of sledding, making snowmen and having snowball fights. As everyone is aware, other sections of the country are suffering a particularly harsh winter. News pictures of entire states under white-out conditions, a section of New York in which the snowfall is being recorded in feet rather than inches, and stranded motorists on the highways being shuttled to emergency shelters. And it has become painfully evident in recent years of our great dependence on air travel and of how airlines are often lacking in decent service, sometimes almost criminally so. In recent weeks horror stories abound about being kept in an airplane on the tarmac for eight, nine and more hours at a time without sufficient food, and with overflowing toilets, just several hundred yards away from the terminal. Even for those passengers who finally make it to a flight that takes off within an hour of loading, the long ticket lines or finding a place to wait with their baggage until the airplane loads, or being told that the flight is delayed or even canceled are making air travel a hell. The obvious answer is that is a check against terrorism that was necessitated by the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. We can accept that although we don't like it. But long delays and canceled flights had already become part of the travel picture before that date. Airlines often overbook their flights on the assumption that some passengers will be unable to make it because of illness or other reasons. When most of them show up, some passengers have to be bumped. Perhaps it is a sound business practice but explain that to the college student whose parents have arranged to have many friends over for her homecoming, or to the grandfather who hasn't seen his grandchildren for several years. Tell them why they were selected to be left behind when their reservations had been confirmed before they went to the airport. Chicago's O'Hare Airport had more than 1,000 cots in preparation for passengers who were stranded there overnight the last week in February. Just the knowledge that the cots probably would be required is a reflection on the reality of air travel today. One airline, recognizing its own shortcomings and the growing public resentment, has issued a passenger bill of rights. Other airlines are expected to follow, but it may be a long time, if ever, before we see air travel becoming a convenience again. As this is being written, the Central Coast is getting rain in showers that come and go. So far this winter we have largely escaped the pounding day-after-day precipitation that floods sewers and isolates residents of some parts of the county. It is the type of rain that farmers and ranchers like. It is plentiful enough for the crops and to grow the grass upon which livestock feed. It is expected to result in a decent hay crop this summer. Another cycle of planting and cultivation is already underway and will continue for most of the year. This is the time when thousands of faces of those who have been absent since December begin to appear again as they are required for the farming season. They do not come all at once but by the end of April most of them will be here as the plants or trees with which they are accustomed to work will require their services. Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, beets, spinach all require specialists and those who have worked them before go into the fields to begin another season. Area agriculture took a big ht last year when some spinach was found to be tainted by an E. coli strain and all spinach was pulled off the nation's shelves. A lesser scare followed when lettuce was thought to be the source of sickness in a national restaurant chain. A cold snap in January hit area growers but was especially hard on citrus growers in southern California and in other states where millions upon millions of dollars was lost with the fruit destroyed. Despite those incidents, and despite all the factors that makes agriculture a dice roll -- intemperate weather, pests, plant and tree diseases and rising costs -- we can be grateful that many choose to grow our food and bring it to us. Science keeps working toward a solution to raising food with minimal loss, and someday it may be that we will benefit from colossal techno-farms in which weather and pests are completely controlled and a maximum of food is produced. Until that time, the farmer goes out with his knowledge and experience to produce our food in much the same way that his earliest ancestors did -- with a love of the land, toil and sweat, determination and a faith that carries him through the bad years and makes him grateful for the food ones. |
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