Last Wednesday’s rain started in the night, our second rain of the new water year. It kept me awake, hoping for thunderous downpours to follow the thunder. They didn’t come until later in the day, several cloudbursts that temporarily filled the gutters on Tulare Road all the way to the center line. All totaled, however, we really only got pennies from heaven, not the hundreds of dollars’ worth we need to repay our debt to the reservoirs and groundwater table. But those pennies were welcome anyway.
I loved how it made the morning
smell. I loved how it settled the
dust. I loved how the trees’ fairy
fingers, lightened of their dirt, waved happily in response to the unstable air
mass moving through our region. And
despite the possibility that El Nino will evaporate over the Pacific, I enjoyed
my quiet anticipation of more to come.
“It’s going to get worse before it
gets better,” a friend who farms told me last week. “Explain,” I asked. “Even if we get enough rain to fill the
reservoirs, it’s going to be years before the well water comes back. Meanwhile, those people who’ve been just
hanging on, paying sky-high prices for water hoping to last one more year, are
going to give up . . . .” And there he
stopped, letting me fill in the blank.
It’s the small farmers we both worry
about, the people who make their homes and lives here, tilling the soil and
tending the groves. It’s those people
who have helped fill the pews in the past and the slots in volunteer fire
departments, manned school boards and irrigation districts, run packinghouse
meetings. Those people who stop what
they’re doing to help a stranger on the side of the road, and talk for hours
standing in each others’ driveways. I’m
for them even if I don’t like the way they vote, the way they talk about social
issues, or the stubborn independence that makes organizing them in their own
interests harder than herding cats.
I’m for them because the small towns
need them, and I’m for small towns. This
is true even if I don’t like the non-inclusive social settings characteristic
of small towns and the tendency of their citizens to minimize horizons. I’m for small towns because they provide the
incubators people need to become human, including participation in
society. I’m for them because they’re
knowable environments, and I think intimacy with our environment is a human
need. I’m for them because, despite what
most people think, democracy is still possible here if - and this is a big If -
there is not a huge disparity in wealth, if the gap between the richest and the
poorest is not too wide to cross.
Mayor Padilla took a bold step
toward re-democratizing Lindsay last week when she put the subject of hiring a
permanent city manager on the agenda. The
old guard tried to block it, including the current interim city manager, Bill
Zigler (who has no training or experience in being a city manager, as well as
no training in city planning, the well-paid position he’s held here for years.)
He was aided by at least one long-term
council member. During the meeting,
objections were raised about the salary cost and the timing, both red
herrings. The old guard appears to fear
someone from the outside coming in and seeing our condition, while the new
guard puts hope in that, in the re-establishment of some kind of fiscal sanity
and social awareness in the person responsible for running our town.
I share that hope. It may seem like too little too late, with
many horses already well down the road, the barn door flapping in their
wind. But it certainly is not too
soon. May Mayor Padilla’s efforts be
rewarded with public support. Watch for
notice of a special study session on the hiring process, and come add your
voice to the mix. Help settle the
dust: be like the rain, a drop here, half
an inch there, pennies from heaven.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a small farm town advocate who writes. You can send her your rain reveries c/o P.O.
Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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