On the Back Roads (13 page)

T
he Sierra Nevadas at my back, I crossed the floor of California's great Central Valiey, the argi-rich San Joaquin. Ahead was the Pacific Coast and, of course, another range of mountains to cross. That's a given. By definition, to have a valley this big, mountains must rise on each side to make it.

Getting over the low Diablo Range was a breeze compared to the Sierras. Highway 152 made it quick and easy. I climbed past the San Luis Reservoir and coasted into the little town of San Juan Bautista.

Perched on a bluff at the edge of town, the Faultline Restaurant looks out over the San Andreas Fault. There is nothing to see, really, because the fault lies under fields of lettuce. But it's out there. Curious people like me come to look, anyway.

The residents of this quiet town, population 1,650, don't make a big thing of living on the edge. But they could hardly be closer to the earth's most famous fracture, which cuts through western California from top to bottom. Slippage and movement along the 800-mile fault, which extends as deep as ten miles, causes hundreds of earthquakes every year, sometimes as many as two or three a day.

The San Andreas Fault is as much a part of the natural environment here as the weather. In fact, the almanac in the weekly newspaper reports local earthquake activity together with inches of rainfall, temperature highs and lows, and lunar phases.

“Most of them are small, magnitudes around 2, maybe a 4 occasionally. Last week there were fifteen earthquakes in the San Francisco area, which includes us down here in San Juan. Were it not for our sensors, and there's a hundred planted around this county, we would never know they happened.” Al Balz is the earthquake expert in San Juan Bautista. A volunteer, he looks after the U.S. Geological Survey's seismograph here but claims the title “expert” comes purely by association.

The seismograph—the only one Al knows of that is accessible to the public—is sits on a bluff above the fault. Taped to the inside of its glass case are heliographic traces of some significant quakes from as far away and Japan and Bolivia.

“You mean those were recorded here?”

“You bet.” He pointed to the trace of an earthquake in the Sea of Japan. “That was a 7.7 magnitude. You can see it knocked the needle off the paper for three minutes. We didn't feel it, of course.”

It's ironic that this minute-by-minute recorder of California's contemporary history, so much a part of life here, rests on the exact spot where much of California's early history originated. It was here in 1797 that Father Fermin Lasuen decided to build the fifteenth in a the chain of California missions. Looking out over the valley of spring mustard, he was obviously not aware that he was standing on the edge of a geological wonder which, 109 years later, would destroy much of his mission.

By 1823, Father Lasuen's group had founded twenty-one missions along a 600-mile route from San Diego to Sonoma, just north of San Francisco. At each mission, almost as a ritual, they planted olive trees. El Camino Real, “The King's Highway,” connected the missions. The route later served as a major stagecoach and wagon road. Today it is closely parallels U.S. 101.

Spain claimed title to California then. The missions, each administered by two priests and six soldiers, were a valiant but vain attempt at colonization. Their growth, significant in the early years, was essentially the work of those who were already here—the Native Americans. So Spanish California was little more than a remote, ill-supplied outpost of European civilization.

Mission San Juan Bautista outgrew its first church within a few years. So, in 1812 it opened the largest of the mission churches, the only one with nine bells. Imprinted in its high-gloss, brown tile floor are the footprints of wild animals. Made about two centuries ago, the tiles were apparently spread out on the ground to dry. Animals roamed across area at night and must have roamed over the tiles while they were still soft enough to make impressions.

In 1906, an earthquake caused the walls of the church to fall down, along with the nine bells. The church was not completely rebuilt until 1976. Only three of the bells were put back. Apparently, it was religious business as usual during those fifty years, as this mission claims to be one—if not the only one—that has never been without a priest since it opened.

Foreigners—Americans, that is—began to arrive during the 1840s. By then, California beionged to Mexico. Among them was the nine-member Breen family who showed up at the mission penniless and were given shelter. They were members of the luckless Donner Party that reportedly resorted to cannibalism to survive the winter of 1846, stranded high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Breens became an important family in town.

The Breen home is now part of the state historic park, on the bluff with the mission. Its focus is a plaza, a square block of lawn surrounded by a beautifully restored building dating back to 1840.

The town of San Juan Bautista grew and took on its own identity apart from the mission. At one point it had four newspapers and seventeen saloons. Eleven times a day a stagecoach rumbled into town. Its main street has changed little
since the building boom of the mid-to late 1800s. Like their occupants, the function of most every building has changed a few times.

The Abbe Mercantile is the town's first brick building, vintage 1861. Every morning before dawn, it is surrounded by the aroma of baking bread, which makes the San Juan Bakery sign redundant. Its brick oven, fifteen feet deep and almost as wide, produces 350 loaves a day. There is seldom any left at day's end for John House and his family to take home. John, his wife, his son, and two daughters work the twelve-hour-a-day business.

When I met John, he was pulling round loaves out of the hot oven with a wooden paddle. Pouring us some coffee, he and his son took one of the rare breaks they get between six and noon.

“Our sourdough bread is the most popular, I think. Maybe its because our starter is forty years old,” John said.

His son James added that they use 2,000 pounds of bread flour and 500 pounds of sugar a week. Then James confessed to his worst day. “I left out the salt. This is not a forgiving business. You can't fix it. We filled a few garbage cans that day, but it will never happen again, ever.”

A customer approached our table and asked James how much sugar was in the Portuguese sweetbread. “Fifteen percent.”

“That's another thing. People are now very aware of sugar, salt, and fat. We have to know how much of each is in everything. And believe me, they ask. A few years ago they didn't care, or at least they didn't ask.”

The morning I left town, I rose early and stepped outside my motor home. Roosters and peacocks were making themselves known from half a dozen places around town. A crop duster hums somewhere low and out of sight. The chimes in the Glad Tiding Church told that me that it was 6:00 a.m. I walked to the bluff to check the overnight seismic activity. None.

It was Sunday. The sun shone full on the mission. Those who doubt the reality of a God and heaven would have a
tough time explaining this day. The serenity of this place at this moment was overwhelming. I thought about going for my camera, but film would only capture the image, a small part of what I was experiencing.

Automatic sprinklers watering the plaza chattered be hind me. Under my feet, the ground was black with the crushed droppings of Father Lasuen's olive trees.

I
was headed south on Interstate 5, paralleling the California Aqueduct. This water-delivery system has done as much for this state as its weather. Combining nature's most precious gifts, farmers have made the San Joaquin Valley America's year-round vegetable garden. This was originally a bowl of dust and tumbleweeds. Now crops thrive, people work, and the economy prospers. But pools of water here are as rare as trees.

Just driving through it, the San Joaquin Valley seemed an unlikely spot for a fish farm. A guy named Jake Webb, however, began raising catfish here at an age when most men consider it a project just to get through the day. He is in his eighth decade, having begun his career as a fish farmer about ten years ago.

After leaving the interstate, I pulled off Highway 198 just west of Lemoore, an all-American family town of multi-generation farmers and Navy folks from the nearby naval air staiion. Earlier I was told, “If you don't live there or know somebody who does, don't bother.” And I wasn't going to until I heard about Jake.

I pulled into the fenced-in yard of his son Larry's auto shop. Jake stood out in his bib overalls with blue stripes, which almost matched those of his shirt.

I began by telling Jake that I knew nothing about catfish.

“They are slippery and horny. What else do you want to know?” Jake kept taking off his straw hat and scratching the side of his head, but only when he talked. It must have helped him think. “Tell you what. I'm going out there. You best just come along and see for yourself.”

We climbed in his pickup and drove back to where two rows of rectangular ponds had been bulldozed out of a field. Dirt was pushed up in mounds to form dikes between them. The flat tops of the dikes were were wide enough—just barely—for Jake's big truck.

“I usually use a golf cart on this. Today I've got to fix it,” Jake reminded himself.

Each pond or bed was about sixty feet across and a little longer than a semi. Jake said they were four feet deep. Clogs of dirt fell into the muddy water as we moved along the narrow dike. Looking straight down, I began to understand the advantage of using the golf cart.

I asked Jake how many fish were in each pond.

“Hell, what do you mean how many? I don't know.” He glared at me. “I can't see ‘em. Can you? And even if I could, how do you count fish in a pool? Try it sometime.”

Jake again scratched the side of his head. “I put a bunch in a couple of years ago. I can tell you for sure, something is eating an awful lot of food at $300 a ton.”

He stopped the truck beside a cluster of pipes that rose from a corner of the dike. We got out. Jake turned a valve. “The cats in here are three years old and weigh probably five, six, seven pounds. Tomorrow a fellow is going to take out about a ton and haul them to San Francisco.”

“You call that harvesting?”

“Don't call it anything. We just run a seine down the pond attached to two pickups and pull the fish out at the end.” He started toward the truck. “The guy tells me they sell 15,000 pounds of catfish a week in Chinatown.

“I worry about ‘em a lot.” We resumed our balancing act along the dike. “If the electricity goes off, the aerating towers quit, and fish can't live long without oxygen. They could also get wiped out overnight by a disease.”

We passed an employee of Jake's who was standing waist deep in a pond, fully clothed, probing the muddy bank with both arms. Jake explained that he was picking up eggs, the last of the spawning season, for the hatchery.

“The eggs hatch in two to four days at these temperatures. If the water were colder, like sixty-five to seventy degrees, it would take a week,” said Jake. In nature, only about 3 percent of the little fish survive, but in Jake's hatchery and aerated tanks and ponds, he estimates that 25 percent make it to adult hood.

“How did you get into this?”

“Stupidity,” he replied, slowly steered the truck around a narrow corner of a fish pond. More mud splashed into the water. I had thoughts of the truck doing the same. “I was going to grow cotton, but it cost too much to get started. It's a risky business, I discovered. Channel catfish are like turkeys. If they can find a way to kill themselves, they will.”

I didn't get to ask how he discovered that. We got out at the hatchery. Here a paddle driven by an electric motor simulated nature. Jake explained that the “old Tom” stays with the eggs and fans them with his tail to keep them clean. The gentle wave action simulates the fanning motion. It appeared Jake had thought of everything.

I
drove into Lemoore looking for an air-conditioned place to eat lunch. My motor home was much too hot. Before I knew it, I passed through town. So I turned around and stopped at the Vineyard Inn.

Because I was alone, I guess, and maybe looked bored waiting for lunch, the thoughtful waitress brought me a copy of the local weekly, the
Lemoore Advance.
A front-page story announced the school board's decision on the dress code for elementary students. Hence forth it will be impossible to tell the boys from the girls by what they wear to school here. One exception: no earrings for the boys.

Lunch finished, the waitress served me a gift dessert of hot apple crisp. She said something about it being the last piece. Lemoore was taking on a kindly personality and becoming more than just the hometown for people I don't know. What a difference a waitress makes!

Lemoore has always been a service center for farmers. In 1958, the Navy began building an enormous air station ten miles west of town. This gave Lemoore a population boost in the 1970s and 1980s. Otherwise, not much has changed. The jet base poured dollars and people into the community. Life
here was uncomplicated, comfortable, and easy. As schools and churches got larger, bonds grew between the long-time residents and the world-traveled newcomers from the Navy.

With their rural lifestyle in common, each came to depend on the other, as people will do in a small town. Local families visited the base for air shows and open-house barbecues. The Navy people attended PTA meetings in town and became serious competitors in the winter bowling league and summer soft ball.