I know I give Modesto a hard time sometimes. It's the Anti-New York: the city that always sleeps. Two seasons: Hot and Fog. The Midwest of California. (With no offense to the actual Midwest.)
Although I miss some of the people that are still there, springtime is the only time I really miss the Central Valley. Since I'm not there to show you, you should take a look at this Flickr search of blossoms in Modesto. And this one.
During one of our poorest times, when Mike and I first got together and he was working so that I could finish my last year of college, we lived in the only house that I could find where I could have a dog. It was in the middle of an almond orchard on the outskirts of the tiny town of Hilmar. Hilmar is most famous for its cheese factory, a facility that actually makes more money from its whey, aka protein powder, than its cheese, these days.
We lived across from and down the road from muddy Portuguese dairies that partied to tuba music on Saturday nights, and down the road from an enormous turkey farm. Turkeys, in case you didn't know a) stink in the summertime and b) frequently suffocate or perish from other causes, which c) creates a pile of dead turkeys that, well, see a). When Mike would pick me up from school in our one shared vehicle, we'd stop at the stop sign on the way home, count to three, hold our breath, and drive as fast as we could past the stench. Sometimes only to suck in a lung-full of eau de cow manure on the first breath.
It was where we learned to do the "country wave" which is holding up your hand in a sort of straight-forearm, bent elbow "how" position (think Tonto) when driving or walking towards anyone on a country road. At first, we couldn't figure out why everyone was waving at us. Finally we went with it. It's what you do in the country. In Hilmar, in Napa Valley, or anywhere. You can always tell the "city people" wherever you are, because they don't get "the wave". It's like secret handshake, or maybe a secret salute. In your neighborhood in town, you do it to your neighbors, but in the country, you do it to everyone, whether you know them or not.
Our house, humble, paneled and bi-sected as it was, was literally surrounded by almond trees in a well-groomed orchard, with levees every few rows for irrigation from the canals, (or for tripping over during late-night drunken camera-tag). Most of the year, the orchard was dusty or muddy, depending on the season. Or full of noise and tractors shaking the "L" out of the "A-mands". (Yes, that's how they get that way.)
After the seemingly endless dense, damp gray of a Central Valley winter, when the cows looked miserable and droopy and piles of silage steamed in the cold, springtime was magical. Corridor upon corridor of white and pink flowers bloomed on every country road. Our little house was surrounded by white trees snowing a fairy snow of white petals. Seen through the window, silent but for the faint singing of birds, the petals fluttered down, covering the dust. (Like this.) Mike's niece Mackenzie was born in the spring of that year. I remember going to see her when she was first born, how fragile and serious she looked, how delicate. Returning home, I sat and watched the flowers rain their quiet snow, and wrote a poem about how lovely it was that she came at such a gentle time, as though the transition from one quiet world to another had been pre-arranged. Sometime I'll dig that poem up and post it.
Happy Spring.
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