If one can say that driving through an area is visiting, then I visited with an old acquaintance the other day and it was good to meet up again. It was comforting to know that while both of us have aged, neither of us looks too badly and both are still going.
The old acquaintance in this case is California State Route 198 running from Coalinga to San Lucas, a road I had not been over in some 40 years or so. I first became aware of this stretch of asphalt back in my high school years when a couple buddies had girlfriends in Coalinga, but at that time don’t recall ever being the driver on forays to that West Hills town. It was later by three years that the 198 and I became well acquainted when I was working for Southdown Land Company who, along with Western Irrigation, were converting acres of pastureland into vineyards. Today, that piece of the Valley is the site of the well-known San Bernabe Vineyards, but back then it was just “Southdown.”
I was on what was known as the Roustabout Crew, the number varied but was usually made up of five to six workers and one supervisor. It just so happened that back in 1972-74 that crew was mostly made up of guys I knew well or at least knew of from school so it was a nice job at the time. We oversaw building and maintaining roads, canals, pipelines and other duties dealing with infrastructure; we did not have much to do with the actual plants themselves. It was one of those jobs where outside contractors came to the area and needed to draw from the local labor pool and as such many of us hired were inexperienced vineyard workers; in fact, none of us knew anything about grape growing and production but we knew how to work with our hands. I didn’t need instruction of how to use a shovel, basic tool with limited capabilities; pretty much move dirt in small loads from one place to another was all it was designed to do. Same with a hoe or a rake. Heavy equipment was another thing altogether. And the training for using some of these hunks of steel on wheels was “learn as you go;” a valid but often frustrating method of on-the-job training.
My first experience driving anything but a car or pickup happened when one day I was leveling an area that was to be poured with cement for a propane tank pad; the engines used to pump water up from the Salinas River and then through the canals of the reservation were all fueled by propane. As I was busy with this job, one of the big honchos from Bakersfield, Southdown and Western were both from the other valley, drove up in his shiny pickup and told me to get in as he had a job for me. Being a young enthusiastic worker, I quickly complied and off we went to a far corner of the acreage, way down at the southern edge, where we came upon a Ford backhoe sitting along side one of the dirt access roads, which crisscrossed the vineyard. He told me to take the machine back to the shop where it was due for some sort of maintenance or other. Again, being willing to help in any way I could, I hopped out and walked a few paces toward the white and blue machine.
This particular jefe was not known for his congeniality, he was frankly a gruff guy (not how we referred to him then but will suffice for this column) and so I knew I would have to pay particular attention to what I assumed would be a very short tutorial on how to start and then manipulate this tractor. I was wrong. The teaching session was not just short, it was non-existent. I was out of the pickup for only a few seconds when this bigwig just drove away. Had he taken the time to ask, I would have told him I had never been on one of these things in my life. After 20 minutes or so of fiddling with the beast, I got it to motivate and made it to the shop about 20 minutes after that. As time passed, I learned, on my own, how to use a backhoe very successfully and was in the seat of one many times afterward.
My introduction to driving the grape rooting truck, a duel rear axle box van used for hauling grape rootings from a ranch in the other valley back to Jolon for transplanting, was memorable. My first trip over was as a passenger learning the 118 route to the rootings ranch near the small town of Caruthers. We left before sunrise and later while heading east on the 46 out of Paso Robles the warmth of the rising sun had me dozing off, and just as I was in a state of semi-consciousness, BANG! The next thing I know the truck is sliding sideways off the road into a small ditch next to a field. My driver had attempted to pass the vehicle in front when it turned left across the lane and we collided. It took probably 90 minutes for CHP to arrive and write the whole thing up and get us going again; thankfully neither vehicle was damaged much and nobody was hurt.
After they fired that driver, not for that incident but just because he was a bad employee, I took over as truck driver. The first thing I asked was why we didn’t use the 198 instead of the further distanced 46 to access the other valley. They had no answer, at that time, so on my first trip I turned left at San Lucas and headed eastward over the hills.
We will leave this story here and continue with it next week.
Take care. Peace.
