Victor Davis Hanson We lost two entire crops to unseasonable tropical storms and saved one from a deluge by “rolling all night long” with a crew of ten. (Even my 60-year-old dad was on his operated knees and my mom too.) When rain came in those days, health or age was no exemption from rolling. […]
Victor Davis Hanson The trays after picking then sat cooking for 8-12 days, depending on the heat and humidity, the quality of the picker, the height of the vine rows, and the nature of the soil (sandy meant quick drying, heavy loam not so much). Some perfectionist farmers then sent a crew to “turn” or
Victor Davis Hanson As I said, I was a good picker but a lousy farmer inspector. Whether I yelled at the offender depended on whether he was young, male, and a gang banger (yes, demand a good job), or old, tired, and trying (no, let him pass). At ten I once said to my grandfather
Victor Davis Hanson In those days of a half-century ago, there were one or two porta-potties at most at the end of the rows, overused and smelly by noon. (Many were “farm-made” of plywood and not so easily drained and cleaned.) Water canteens were often ill-kept by contractors. What dribbled out was usually hot and
Victor Davis Hanson Raisins are dried grapes. For 100 years, Sun-Maid Raisins, the local co-op, insisted on dried Thompson seedless grapes, the green, seedless grapes you saw once in the store fresh (though in their natural smaller state, without being pumped up from the effects of gibberellic acid, stump and cane girdling, and weekly irrigation
Victor Davis Hanson Illegal aliens largely live in the homes of the vanished agrarians. In turn, they rent out the barns and sheds, and create compounds of 20-30 people, with 10-15 cars parked about. No sheriff, no county inspector, no building inspector dares to set foot on these old homesteads of now dead farmers. They
Victor Davis Hanson So rote, habit, and the familiar were the secret to longevity. Anything that startled the body, the constitution, was seen as an infection, something that could warp a liver or heart, disrupt a healthy homeostasis. Getting on a plane, missing a connection, stressed to find another flight, crammed on with 150 other
Victor Davis Hanson Rural California, like rural America, in the 1960s now seems almost unrecognizable—not so much a different culture as a different universe. Since then, we certainly have advanced materially, but regressed morally. That paradox is often the way of the past as well, at least since some 2,700 years ago when Hesiod railed
Victor Davis Hanson STEP THREE. Change voting and government rules when they are no longer useful. Claim any customs and traditions that are no longer advantageous are mere racist relics or the baleful legacy of old white men. When in the majority, demand the end of the racist filibuster. When in the minority save it
Victor Davis Hanson What if you believed that the U.S. was in mortal danger because its elections continually led to the wrong results and policy choices? What if the “people” were just too ignorant of what was good for them and continually displayed such dangerous cluelessness in how they voted? How could you even work