Well, we climbed into my old truck, waved so long to Dwight and Buck, and headed west towards the coast and Santa Cruz. (Hey!  That sounds like a good kickoff line for a new Eagles song!!)   We had about a five hour drive ahead of us and it was a beautiful day.  Just the perfect setting for some great sight-seeing and reflecting.  Charlotte and I began talking about how we like the time we are spending behind the wheel.  It is allowing us to actually experience a little of Americana instead of just gripping the armrests of a 767 at 38,000 feet, breathing everybody’s recycled breath, and hoping the TSA was doing a good job that day when they packed you into that “airborne cattle car”.

As we crossed the state on I5, we passed beautifully kept fields, orchrids, and vinyards of everything you could imagine.  I started passing an 18 wheeler pulling a double trailer.  As I got closer and passed him,  I could see he was carrying roma tomatoes in these deep open trailers.  I must have passsed 50 or more double trailers just like him full of those beautiful tomatoes.  We passed 18 wheelers loaded with nothing but garlic, onions, and several other vegetables.  The bounty of food produced by this land is staggering!

And looking down those beautifully kept, perfectly straight rows that seemed to be miles long, were laborers bent over, harvesting the crops.  Looking at those laborers, my mind went back to when I was about 11 years old and I was in Mitchell’s Grocery  there in Monahans with my mama.  Now Mama loved grapes.  She always had a grape arbor at home and she loved to eat them.  Well, our poor little vines there in Monahans couldn’t produce what was demanded by my mama and my brothers so she had gone to Mitchell’s to get some more grapes.  I remember walking beside her pushing the grocery cart over to the fruit counter.  There were no grapes.  In fact, there were very few fruits of any kind.  Mama asked Mr. Mitchell where were the grapes.  Mr. Mitchell said, “Ms. Bill, (that’s what he called my mom), haven’t you seen the news?” (we didn’t own a TV).  He said, “there is this guy out in California named Ceasar Chavez who has caused all the workers to go on strike and not pick fruit.  So we won’t have any grapes until that strike is over.”

So at the age of about 11, I first heard of Ceasar Chavez in a very personal way, he had taken my mama’s grapes!  Looking down those rows at those laborers, my thoughts went back to Ceasar Chavez.  Here was a man who had no formal education, never owned his own home, and never made $10,000 in a year for his labor.  Yet, with his passive, firm leadership he brought giants to their knees and made them do what was right for his fellow laborers.  And 1200 miles east of him, an 11 year old boy heard his name and never forgot this was the man who had the power to take food off his mama’s table.  Where else but in America?  God, I love this country!