Valleys

I live in San Jose. Recently, the city government, or the Convention and Visitor's Bureau, or the Chamber of Commerce, or some official or quasi-official body has begun calling what the Spaniards and mexicans called "El Pueblo de San Jose" the Capital of Silicon Valley.

Hmmmm. It is certainly the seat of the county government. And Silicon Valley is certainly important to the County, indeed Silicon Valley, or more properly Santa Clara Valley is the financial engine, not just of Santa Clara County but of all of Northern California. But calling San Jose the capital of Silicon Valley seems pretentious, at least to me. When downtown San Jose was a dirty slum and nobody in their right mind went unarmed into the east side of the city, the computer industry was buzzing and chirping away in the cities to the northwest of San Jose. Palo Alto is where HP was started in a garage. I think it was Mountain View or Palo Alto where Shockly invented the the electronic semi-conducting transistor. PARC was in Palo Alto. And the first sketch of a hard drive was made on a napkin at the Waggon Wheel Resaurant in Mountain View. (I shouldn't leave out the Sunnyvale. The fruit cocktail was invented in the Libby's plant that no longer exists. There are no more fruit packing plants in Santa Clara County.) Now many of the big technology companies have their world headquarters in San Jose. Adobe is even downtown (it isn't a slum anymore.) and has built a nice children's playground next to one of their buildings. (My little boy likes it.)

Today we drove from San Jose, in the Santa Clara Valley to the San Juaqin Valley. I think the only way to get there is to go through the Diablo Mountains via the Pacheco Pass. The Pass was originally cut by the Ausaymus Indians. Their path went from the ocean to the San Juaquin Valley. Later it became a conveinent route for Roman Catholic missionaries and Spanish soldiers. California Highway 152 follows the route now. The San Juaquin Valley has another name: The Central Valley. If you look at California from outer space the Central Valley is the thing that you will notice.

When I was a little boy and lived in Silicon Valley the air was so dirty and smoggy that many days I could not see the mountains around the valley. (Ironically, I lived in Mountain View!) Today the air is much cleaner and I can always see the mountains. To the west they are covered with the gorgeious green of redwood trees because of the wet ocean air. To the east they are golden brown, with little green patches in the draws where oak trees have found a little rivulets to slake their thirst. In the Central Valley, the air has gone the other direction.

When I would visit my Uncle Fred as a boy I could always see the Diablo Range to the west and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada range to the east. But the air has grown brown there. Today I was less than 20 miles from the Sierras and I couldn't see them. It was shameful. But it seems like every little town in that valley wants to be like Los Angeles or San Jose: Sprawled all over the place with cookie-cutter sinlge-family "homes" (realtors never call them houses) where fruit trees used to stand. And where there is sprawl there are roads. And where there are roads there are cars. And cars make smog. It is shameful. I'm not opposed to growth. I'm just opposed to suburban growth. I know I've said it before but here I go again: Cities are good. Rural areas are good. Suburbs are bad. It is such a waste. If I weren't a free-market capitalist I'd make it a crime to cut down a healthy fruit tree.

Well, I'll get down off of my soapboax now. I'll tell you what I saw while driving. Thousands of acres in almonds and grapes. Scores if not hundreds of acres in cotton. Also corn. And much alfalafa. We saw dairy cattle and beef cattle. We saw a goat dairy, too. While driving through the little town of Firebaugh we saw a quinceanera taking place at the VFW hall. Or it might have been a wedding. It is hard to know since the girls whear white at both a wedding and a quinceanera. Either way, it looked like people were having fun, and the girls were beautiful as only 15 year old girls are- they think they know what life is about, but they don't really. I love the central valley. I was born there. My wife was born there. I hate what is happening to it.

The place we were going was a big house surrounded by about 15 square miles of vinyards. The house was on a little rise, with many tall trees. It was right on the widest part of the San Juaquin River and there was an observation deck on the second floor that overlooked the river. The occasion was my wife's cousin's graduation from university. Being Californians, we had grilled tri-tip to eat. It was a very pleasant afternoon. I read the current issue of the New Yorker to my wife and little boy on the drive there. He slept on the way back. It was a good day.