Because everyone has hands and feet, however, we believe that menial or stoop labor can be done by anyone with the proper resignation and permanently lowered ambition. Increasingly we realize that our own children cannot or will not do such tasks as part of their growing up, so we basically cover our ears and eyes, and let others do what they must. Thus we ignored the sudden entry of millions of rural Mexican poor. But what at first was a relief became a troubling dilemma, and is now a near-disaster.
We all can become hypocritical and at times amoral, admiring illegal aliens as individuals - housekeepers, gardeners, kids' friends - but feeling less kindly when we see them in long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or scan their pictures in newspaper ads for Crime Stoppers or reports from the police blotter.
I start with impressions gained from observing the roadside in front of my vineyard. There are five stretches of replanted vines. I habitually replant vines. As part of that task I also put in new stakes and patch wire. I also fish out cars of inebriated illegal aliens - five now in twenty years. I own a very small frontage on an underused rural avenue, so I cannot help but assume that the phenomenon of illegals leaving the road at high speed is surely widespread. There is an unwavering pattern in all five crashes on my land. A large Crown Victoria or Buick Le Sabre of decade-old vintage veers off the road at seventy miles per hour, ploughs through the vineyard and comes to a halt three or four rows in from the asphalt. The vine canes, stakes and wire serve as a cushion for the driver, who is never seriously injured. By the time I reach the scene, he has hobbled off through the vineyard - leaving beer cans, his crushed car, and $5,000 in ruined vines. The car was practically worthless, but now is totaled and less than worthless - and of course without license and registration.
The California Highway Patrol arrives two hours later to impound the wreck for the price of towing it away. If I am particularly upset, I make a follow-up call and learn from the official accident report that the crushed Impala had either nonexistent or fraudulent paperwork. So I shrug and spend a day clearing out the mess from the vineyard, picking up the glass, plastic car parts, broken stakes and decapitated vines. Then in winter I replant rootings and wait three years for them to bear - and write off the lost income and added expense. If I tell the officer who investigates the accident that I wish he had at least apprehended the criminal, he usually sighs off the record, "What would it matter? When we do catch them they have no license, no registration and no insurance - and it's a hassle to call the INS anyway." One time, and one time alone, the CHP officer arrested the miscreant in my devastated vineyard. Why? Before he plowed into my vines, he had sideswiped a county bridge down the road. Three feet of aluminum railing remained enmeshed in his grill - proof, as it were, that the State of California itself had been attacked by this illegal alien and therefore was finally within its rights to jail him and sell off his wrecked car.
I once got a chain and tried to drag the wreckage out with my tractor to impound it for scrap metal - until I was told by the authorities on the scene that this constituted "theft" and I must leave the demolished car in my vineyard until the county tow arrived to cart it away and store it in case the owner should later try to reclaim it. The law seems to say that the vehicle of the illegal alien who destroyed thousands of dollars' worth of vines is more sacrosanct than the property of the citizen.
About once a month I also systematically clear the roadside of trash - not just the usual beer bottles, tires and occasional fast food debris that accumulates as if by a law of nature, but entire plastic bags of foul wet garbage, soiled diapers and assorted household items: plastic toys, dishes, boxes and magazines. Sometimes the litter is tossed well into the orchard, where it pops tractor tires and clogs the cultivator. About once every six months, sofas, beds, televisions, washers and dryers, and entire bedroom sets and dirty mattresses appear on our property. If they are clustered in piles, they must be removed within hours. Otherwise the neglected flotsam suggests laxity, and laxity sends the message that the road by or through our farm has become a free dump.
Twice I have caught the dumpers, who despite curses agreed to pick up their offal. Twice I have found receipts in the trash for power or other bills, and so have had the sheriff track down the owners and order them to come back and clean up the mess. But mostly I just pick it up and forget about who did it. This pastoral drama is endless, despite the fact that city garbage pickup is cheap, and county
