Twenty Years!

The Valley air is filthy with agricultural dust and smog, the temperatures today are in the 100's, and the almond orchards are full of branches cracking from the weight of their fruit.

A hazy mountain range borders the Valley to the west, today barely visible through the dirt in the air; the Sierras to the east are invisible until the weather changes in a few days. The Valley itself is flat, and dry, and its culture is that of farming and commuting.

I was thinking about these things today as I drove along the Stanislaus River, taking "back" roads to Modesto to avoid the freeways.

The first time I encountered the Central Valley was in 1985, when my husband took a year-long job assignment here. Instead of the lush green wild fruitfulness of Pennsylvania, I found sere dried grasses in the pastures. Instead of compact little (nearly) self-sufficient towns, I gazed upon tasteless, wasteful sprawl. Instead of my towering four-bedroom Victorian, I set our luggage down in a dumpy three-bedroom ranch style house with an ugly carpet and hard-water-stained bathrooms.

A year passed; the work assignment was done. We went back to Pennsylvania, to fishing, to berry-picking in July, to walking through magical nights when snow fell through the streetlights in a dizzying dance ...

And remembered how instead of towns of 12,000 white people, most of whom were related, there were every imaginable color of people in the sprawling towns of California, and how Yosemite National Park was only an hour or so away, and how San Francisco used to welcome us, with its glorious smells and smiles and celebration.

This morning I remembered again the Friday in 1988 when my husband came home from work after a harrowing week of arguing with his bosses about whether or not to be honest, with an ultimatum that he'd been given, three choices: knuckle under, come to work at the corporate offices where his penchant for honesty and fairness could be subdued, or quit.

There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind when he told me. My heart leaped and my eyes filled with tears. "Quit!!!!!!!! Then we can go home again!!!!"

In two weeks, both of us had been offered jobs here in the Valley. It was a time of grace and blessing, being brought to where we had come to love more than any other place.

Twenty years later, I still remember, and still thank God for bringing us home. Hot and dusty, flat and crazy ... hey, Dorothy, there's no place like Home.