“Never let school interfere with your education.”- Chiles Wilson.
Being the Delta High School Valedictorian is a lot like being the tallest Wilson.
It’s funny, but the joke is on me. My GPA at Delta never broke a 2.5,
I even got a C in Mr. Garcia’s Spanish Class. This is thoroughly reprehensible because Spanish is my first language. I didn’t become a cunning linguist until college anyway. Here’s why.
Midway through freshman year, I ratted out my cousin for consulting the Oracle at Delta High.
Of her many acts of vengeance, the most vicious and calculated was a rumor she spread about me.
At lunch, she sent her best friend outside to stall and distract me. This ensured I’d be late to the cafeteria.
She then informed the entire student body that Vice-Principal Bagby caught Paul Wilson doing unspeakable things in the Boy’s bathroom.
When I entered the cafeteria, the whole lunchroom turned, faced me and burst into laughter. A group of people walked past me shaking their fists like they were rolling dice. Deer in headlights, I gave a confused laugh and returned the gesture. This sent students into a frenzy. Classmates were convulsing like they were casting out demons at a Baptist Exorcism.
The sting of the rumor lasted throughout my tenure at Delta and my innocence was never fully vindicated.
Turns out that being labeled as a juvenile Louis CK limits your dating options. Thanks Care Bear. It was an important lesson in the power of disinformation.
In war, the truth is so precious, it must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies. Churchill taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting.
December, Sophomore year, I cut off the tip of my left index finger in woodshop.
Even though I didn’t sue the school, the looming threat of lawsuit put Delta High in a precarious position. I was a terrible student that they couldn’t fail. Their solution was to force me into the Regional Occupational Program, ROP for short.
At noon everyday, I would go to work for the weasel warren, pruning pears and cutting blight. It was an ironic punishment for someone with a poor track record in woodworking.
Cultivating my inner Miyagi did teach me a lot about tree growth. Pruning dictates how trees preform.
We shape the trees and then afterwards the trees shape us.
“There are three ways to get into agriculture: womb, tomb or marriage.” -Dr. Hagen
Hagen is wrong.
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I bottom fed for baby food companies, refereed fistfights between Linden-Italians, birddogged a hyper Christian stone fruit company and worked for a box broker.
There are plenty of other ways to get in. You can buy your way in. You can hustle up private equity. You can work you’re ass off. You can launder cartel money. You can exploit the egos of the powerful. You can steal water.
The ways of getting in are endless.
Getting out is a different story.
“Pear farming is a disease cured by bankruptcy or death.”- Randall Cunningham.
When I arrived in Lake County for harvest, I thought my disease of Pear farming would be cured by death.
The Ranch and River fires scorched a million acres and were encroaching on my AirBNB in Lakeport. Ash and cinder had blanketed the county, the air was unbreatheable and pear harvest was halted.
The only remaining inhabitants were: yours truly, national guardsmen, firefighters, farmers and White Walkers (local meth addicts).
At every major intersection, National Guardsmen interrogated me. First they would accuse me of looting. Then, because of my new truck they assumed I was a drug trafficker. Eventually, my credentials would check out, and i would have to go through the same song and dance at the next checkpoint.
In the guardsmen’s defense, I did look like a drug runner.
Part of Lake County’s charm is the unspoken, obvious undercurrent of drug money. Dreadlocked teenagers in brand new lifted trucks. VCR rental stores that definitely don’t exist to launder anything. Soil amendments, camouflage, water delivery services all for sale. Cash.
It’s like an episode of Ozark’s.
I spend a minimum of six weeks there per year.
To quote my father, “It’s for his education.”
“Never try to predict the future.” -Paul Wilson, California Pear Board River District Estimating Committee Chair
The quest for certainty is a fool’s errand. Find yourself a bona fide crop insurance agent and leave the predictions to fools and charlatans
If Mother Nature’s manic depressive whims have taught me anything, it’s that we farmers are not wiser than trees.
The trees were here first. But if we do our jobs, the trees will be here long after we are gone.