Winters

Ronny Smith

Winters, California. A stale slice of Americana, a Steinback novel in waiting, where the air hangs heavy on the power lines like a deflated balloon under the wide-open sky. I arrive by means of a lone road that bisects the tracts of green land that spread the Yolo countryside. The sun will set soon. A dark cloud follows me most of the way, and I curl my neck to stare at it as I drive. I’m a half an hour early, which ruins my plan to slip into the meeting unnoticed, so I sit in a cast-iron chair outside of the Old Opera House and observe the town. I’m not sure why this place, a small community of about 7,000 nestled in the western corner of the county, has stricken my nerves in the way it has. Perhaps it is the people. They watch intently as I drive up to the 15-space parking lot that borders Main Street. I feel strange. Perhaps it is just the irritating hunger in my gut. The restaurants all seem to be closed for the evening. The whole town will be at the meeting.
*
I was raised in the Oakland hills, a fortress overlooking the simmering squalor below. I still carry the guilt of my Catholic education like a cross. Oakland. The backside of the Bay.
But San Francisco is the thing. The scent of ocean spray and fresh fish. The shade of Eucalyptus trees. The cosmopolitan mix of yellows, oranges, reds, and greens adorning the city streets. The vibrant sun resting over the Pacific. The progressive people, roaming the peninsula like good merchants and chiding the country bumpkins who shy from the light. San Francisco. The city is palpable. A dewdrop on the grass, the world shines through it.
*
The crowded upstairs of the Old Opera House is fashioned with brown wood and green drapes, like an old saloon. I shuffle languidly into the large room and sit in the back row with my pen and pad. It’s close to dusk and the chandelier above is anything but bright, yet most of the men wear hats. Cowboy hats, bass-fishing hats, Sacramento Kings hats. Maybe they’ve just come from work. They walk around and shake hands with each other. The women chat amicably, their hands about their waists to support their lower backs. Some carry their small children with them.
On the stage at the front of the room are three men and three women, placed behind a long folding table. They smile quietly in business attire. Good city people. An overhead projector is beside them. TANC TRANSMISSION PROJECT, it reads brightly. There is a happy graphic of a white power line corridor meandering across rolling hills.
The meeting is called to order by muffled taps against a microphone, followed by a timid, “Good evening.” The room takes its time to quiet down, and then introductions are made. Then one of the men on the stage begins his presentation, using a power point as an aid. He apologizes that the print is too small for everyone to read. There are grumblings from the audience. The people on the stage remain smiling.
He says that the existing transmission system is not adequate enough to serve Northern California. He says that new 5-kV and 2-kV power lines will provide renewable energy from Lassen County in the north to facilities in the Bay Area and Sacramento. He says that the project is the best option for a sustainable California. He says that the power lines are necessary. He opens the meeting up to question and answer time, and the roar of dissent seems to gather on his words like the curl of a wave. I ruffle my hair and slouch in my seat, preparing for a long night.
“Why didn’t I receive notice of the proposal?” says a young woman standing in the doorway. “The lines go through my property!”
“There were some problems with the information database.”
“What about my house?” calls one man in the front row. “The proposed lines run right through my house!”
“All concerns must be submitted by means of written comment cards by May 31.”
“Your lines will be within a hundred feet of the elementary school!” spits a fiery woman.
“The proposed lines are subject to change.”
“My family’s been growing walnut trees here for 150 years! Your lines cut right through my tree crops!” says an elderly man with a swollen belly.
“Farmers will be compensated for the easements that run through their property.”
“Walnut trees can’t survive no power line! Have you looked at Tom Spanny’s walnut trees? They’re dying cause ‘a the line he’s already got runnin’ through his property!”
Each answer given garners more and more disaffected murmurs. Each question posed seems to grow louder in boisterous personality.
*
When I was seventeen, I drove across country in a Cadillac with my two grandparents and younger brother to visit Oklahoma. They wanted Peter and I to see their old stomping ground. Claremore, Oolagah, Collinsville. Little Oklahoma towns dotting the miles of thick forests and blue lakes. My family had names like Herman Spurlock.
During the drive down long stretches of I-20, isolated billboards broke the desolate earth. HE IS RISEN, they would say. Paradoxes in their own glory. But at night, you could see lightning dancing across the flat plains like electric ballerinas. The vast open sky illuminated in a passionate aura. Deep crimson, tawny, and velvet blanketing the cosmos.
*
The meeting has gone on for a few hours, and the chandelier seems to have become brighter. The three men and three women at the front are no longer smiling. The suits they wear are sweating. I sit pensively, neither agitated nor intrigued. I don’t think of politics. I am entranced. A cough into the microphone announces the onset of another question. I cannot see the man, but his voice carries like a midnight howl.
“All of you know me, but for you people up there, my name is Marty Goodman, and I am the President of the Yolo County Farm Bureau. We requested 90 days to petition against this, and you gave us 30. This is our land you’re talking about. We will not receive benefits from these lines, and furthermore, the lines are outdated technology from the 1930’s. You say we can’t put these 5-kV lines underground, but in New Zealand and Australia, they’re already putting 5-kV lines underground. Other countries have shown that power can be generated in regional areas without power lines. Something fishy is going on around here, and I’m not gonna stand by and watch you get away with it. So for these power lines and you people, I have this to say: Hell no.”
The room is drowned in applause. The stage in front is silent. The overhead projector flickers.
*
My family has owned a five-acre property in Rough and Ready for almost fifty years. The small town of less than one thousand sits outside of Grass Valley, a reminder of the wild and wooded Northern California past. Today, the property sits and grows more wild and wooded by the day.
The house is wrapped in white wooden siding, a large front porch and a white fence. It sits on a hill overlooking the property. It is always warm inside of that house. A burrow nestled in the brown and green wilderness. My grandfather had built the house with his three sons. He had often thought of moving our family to that property. When I visit the place, I feel calm. The trees sigh and the grass whispers. There is the smell of wind; it is a smell only appreciated in the absence of asphalt.
*
The audience is dispersing, and a spattering of conversations floats about. They say things I expected them to say. I still listen.
“I never.”
“Can you believe it?”
“What now?”
“Good old Marty, though.”
As I vacate my folding chair, I notice a small man shuffle out. He is short but stocky. He’s wearing a ruffled brown suit jacket. His tie is too short. He holds himself quietly and merely nods at other members of the audience as he dodges chairs in an effort to escape the room. There is nothing special about him. I will never see him again.
While walking out of the Old Opera House, my mind saunters. Oklahoma, Rough and Ready, Winters. I don’t feel distant from the city, but a blossoming sentiment stirs within me. I can smell the wind again. I think about the people in Oakland. They would want to smell the wind. Would the people of San Francisco? Or do they believe they already do?
The dark cloud has finally arrived, but it is alive like the Oklahoma night sky. It unfolds a glorious shower. The land embraces it, beckoning spring. I embrace it.