The Central Valley

The bullfight last night was fantastic, but I will write about the actual bullfight later this evening or Thursday night, as it deserves a full review here. Getting to the bullfight and coming home were interesting, mostly because of the discussions Jared and I had, but also because of the scenery.

Although threatened by some of the most hideous suburban sprawl imaginable, there are still belts of agriculture not too far from Oakland. I have no idea how much longer they will last, as the ugly ticky tacky spreads like a virus, covering our gorgeous golden hills with grey boxes (now becoming so ugly that I almost miss the silly houses of twenty gables from the '90's), sitting nearly on top of one another, but with just enough space around them to maintain a fiction of a private yard. It does not matter that there are neither real yards, nor interesting public spaces in these things, as the children are inside playing Nintendo, munching on Chips and the parents are surfing between infotainment news shows and infomercials, chasing Prozac with Diet Coke.

That is the great thing about air conditioning. Look at all we can now do! You literally cannot live without it in Livermore! That and garage door openers.

And on this land that once yielded the best produce on Earth, one can now drive an easy 5 minutes to the Albertsafeway to buy produce that arrived last week from Chile! The convenience is mind boggling.

However, there are still pockets, still areas of live oak scrub and Spanish grass and tarantulas and horse farms, still areas where the old barns decay with more beauty than you can think possible.

As you climb out of the Livermore Valley, you see one of our peculiar windmill farms, a now-neglected relic of the Jerry Brown administration. Most of the windmills are motionless now, locked down to prevent injuring birds, but they are still an interesting sight. The hills are formidable, golden brown and rolling into steep canyons, but stark and angular where cut into for roads and rails. In fact a railroad bridge crosses Interstate 580, hinting at the Romanesque, although betrayed by the steel construction.

The shadows on these various road cuts are long, diagonal patches that always remain in my imagination as purple or blue (no doubt thanks to Diebenkorn and Thiebaud), as opposed to the shadows on the hills, which always take me back to early drawing exercises: cross hatching shadow on an egg (of course this is the point of said exercises!).

What really strikes me, though, is the drive South on Interstate 5 to Gustine. The late summer light makes the orchards, the hills, the farms, glow in dusty gold. Here and there we zip by a canyon with a stream, little riparian oases in the semi-arid hills or the stark concrete shores of the California Aquaduct, carrying water to the farms of the Westlands (a whole other story). The water in the canal is blue, reflecting the big blue sky overhead, but not an inviting blue.

Inviting blue water is in Lake Tahoe (until you reach about knee-deep and realize how cold it is), or Tamales Bay, or Bora Bora. The concrete canals scream "Drown Here!" Even on a hundred plus day, that blue water threatens much more than it tempts.

Last night was not 100 degrees, but a pleasant mid-eighties sort of evening. The Mosquitos were thick, as were the other insects that crowded the bullring lights (opaque cloud of them at times).

Gustine is a little town in the Central Valley. It is primarily Portuguese, with a prominant Catholic Church (modern and ugly, though) and a good sized Portuguese hall. Modern Protestant suburbia is striking at the town, however, with a development of ticky tacky on the South side of town, but I can't see how long it will last, as Gustine is really too far to commute to San Francisco from, and it is not the hub of any major industry.

I am tempted by the Central Valley whenever I am in it. I grew up in it, and always made a point that I would get out as soon as I could (which I did), but there is something that always draws me back, if only for a few hours here and there, or a weekend in Sacramento.