Chapter 9

After our little celebration I thought the people on the farm looked less worried, and more relaxed then before. There were still many problems in the total overall community, but they had been somewhat cheered by what was little more than a momentary time out from the very real problems they, and many of their loved ones, were facing.

Lupe came up to me a few days after the party, asking me to let him know if what I'd told all the others was actually true. I learned from him that, in Old Mexico, when the big bosses started telling you not to worry, because everything was just fine, it usually meant just the opposite. Come to think of it, the same was true in the US. When a politician told you not to worry, you just knew things were worse than whatever they were admitting to.

I told Lupe that what Rob and I had told them had been the truth. We really were in excellent financial shape, comparatively speaking, and in no danger of having that change much in the coming months. I assured him, in the event of our financial picture changing, that I'd personally come to him and make him aware that the situation had been altered. He seemed to believe me, but then he had seemed to believe me back on the day of the fiesta also.

Rob came to me with a land deal he claimed was just too good for us to not take advantage. There was a full quarter section of land directly West of our original eighty acre parcel. Another one hundred and sixty acres, and we could buy it from a Los Angeles bank for only one hundred dollars an acre, but only if we acted on this deal immediately. Rob had just found out about it, he said, and had then driven straight home to tell me about it.

There was no question that we could swing the total cash purchasing price, and, because the land was selling so cheaply, Rob said our property taxes wouldn't be very high either. When I started hedging, worried about what this would do to our cash reserves, Rob told me that he wasn't going to let this deal slip by him. One way or another, the land would be purchased. Either by him alone, or with the two of us, in partnership.

What Rob meant was that he'd ask me to distribute some of the money I'd left sitting in his trust account, the one I'd created back when he'd said he was selling me his half of the farm. Under the terms of the trust account, Rob was entitled to have complete access to the money, whenever he chose. I'd left the money in the account as part of our rainy day contingency fund.

Rob's insistence that the land was either being bought by him alone, or else by the two of us, more or less forced my hand. I agreed that we should go ahead and buy it. That was when he informed me that he already had, before he'd left his office. Rob was receiving a five percent selling commission from the bank, for being the agent for the buyer's for the sale. His broker would get a quarter of that, but we'd still save about six hundred dollars off the purchase price.

It certainly seemed like a great deal, but, with the way the economy now was, almost no one was doing any expansion of their holdings. I mentioned this to Rob, in passing, but he told me not to worry. He felt confident he could go ahead and sell the parcel, at a profit, to one or more of his bargain hunting real estate clients from Los Angeles, should the need for doing so ever arise. I signed all the necessary paperwork, on behalf of the farm, and then immediately put the whole matter out of my mind.

From comments he had made to me, Rob was aware that Theresa was seeing at least one other man besides him. His reaction to this was that it helped keep Theresa in a poor position to be applying much pressure on him as far as them taking their relationship beyond where it now stood. I knew, from the noises that periodically came from Rob's bedroom while I was watching television in the living room, that he and Theresa were still very much sexually active with each other.

Hearing them going at it from time to time, brought home to me that I hadn't had sex with anyone for many months. Like any healthy young man, I would have welcomed some relief from my long abstinence. I was also very much aware that Tina, for one, would have been very happy to have me turn to her for that sexual relief. She had come right out and told me that she was ready, willing, and able to have me fuck her whenever I decided I wanted to.

There had been other offers too, none as direct as Tina's, but one of the cashier's at a big home improvement center in Barstow had given me a piece of paper with her name and number on it recently, and I knew this waitress who worked at a diner I frequented out on I-15, who had told me, whenever I came in there to eat, that she would be the best thing to have on the menu.

I knew why I was holding back from doing anything, and it irked me that my memories of Anita were still preventing me from doing what I normally should be more than willing to do, with any of these young women. I wanted her to be completely out of my life, and, physically, she was. If I could somehow manage to expunge her from my thoughts, and from my heart, my life would be much simpler, and probably happier overall as well.

The coming harvest was shaping up to be the biggest one we'd ever had. Lupe and I were both excited by what we were seeing whenever we went out into the trees to look at all those heavily laden branches. Lupe told me he believed we'd get something on the order of fifteen hundred pounds net yield per acre this time. If true, that would translate into one hundred twenty thousand pounds of harvested nuts, or right at a quarter million dollars worth of salable product.

Now that the trees were in twelfth and thirteenth leaf's, their size would make it easier to really shake the nuts off the limbs, without fear of damaging the tree trunks themselves. Lupe claimed that this fact alone would make harvesting much easier to accomplish. We had also invested in a much bigger harvesting catch to circle under the trees and prevent nuts on the farthest outlying ends of the branches to spill over onto the ground. The pole on the nut harvester was four feet longer now, because of this. Lupe had been practicing with it though, and he had assured me the new catch and pole wouldn't pose any problem for him when he went out to shake the trees for the harvest.

I made a few phone calls to some of the smaller nut buyers, and pre sold another thirty thousand pounds of the anticipated harvest. With the prices I was already assured of getting for what had already been pre sold, I was feeling very good about how we were positioning ourselves for the future. If the actual harvest lived up to Lupe's predictions for it, and if nut prices stayed anywhere near the current bids, I could see where it might be a good idea to go ahead and plant the first forty acres of the newly acquired quarter section.

When I mentioned this, in passing, to Rob, the grin on his face let me know how elated he was at my news. A few days later, Rob asked me if I thought it would be too much trouble to set up a new trailer pad and install new hookup's for another mobile home he was considering purchasing. When I asked him why he'd ever want to consider doing that, all he would tell me was that it made sense to seize opportunities whenever and wherever you found them, and that it never hurt to look ahead to the future. While cryptic, that sort of comment wasn't anything unusual, coming from Rob.

I had Lupe call in some of his construction relatives to quote me a price for putting another concrete pad in, and for extending all the utilities out to where they could provide the water, gas, and electric needed to serve the new trailer. Lupe's nephew convinced me that it would make more sense to go ahead and put in two new pads, since I was already paying for the concrete trucks to come all the way out to the farm anyway.

He said buying the extra yardage of concrete would put us at a more favorable rate, as far as the delivery costs were concerned. It made sense to me, and even if we never put a fourth mobile home on the pad, we could still make use of it in other ways.

Lupe came to me with the idea of moving the oldest trailer over to the newly finished fourth pad, and then putting in a new large, prefabricated steel building on the much larger, newly vacated, old slab. It seemed like a lot of work to go through for very little gain, but I finally allowed Lupe to convince me to go ahead and do it. I did tell him there was no way we were going to buy the steel building he had in mind to buy until after the harvest was all in, and the money for it was already safely in our hands.

Raul and Lupe had worked out some complicated changes to the harvest team compensation package. It took into account the value of all the rent they weren't being charged for the months of extra time that they and their extended family occupied all their rooms on the farm, and ate the food we were providing for them. I had no idea why they'd want to change the deal we already had in place. What they were proposing as a replacement was a much worse deal for them. When I first said this to them, Raul told me that I was being very fair to them, and they didn't want to turn around and take advantage of me.

Right before the harvest, Lupe and Raul came to me with some drawings, and with other papers showing projected income and expenses. They then began showing me what the two of them had really had in mind for recommending I buy that new building that Lupe had told me he wanted so badly.

Ten months out of the year there was very little going on at the farm where we'd need all the extra storage the new thirty by sixty steel building would give us. It was mainly for that reason that I hadn't seen the need to underwrite all that added expense.

I now found out that Raul and Lupe had a plan to convert it over to an agriculturally oriented machine shop, and produce replacement parts for farm equipment. They said there was a big market for repairing or fabricating equipment parts, especially where the dealer either no longer carried the part, because the equipment it went on was obsolete, or else because the mark up on the part was so outrageously high that it encouraged after market competition for the dealer.

Lupe and Raul had two people in mind to do the actual fabrication and machining. They were both journeyman machinists, men who had all the necessary experience to do whatever work anyone could reasonably require, and, most importantly, they already owned a full line of machine tools that could be used to complete whatever work they brought in from the outlying outside farms.

These two men, who turned out to be related to Raul, in some unspecified way, were willing to set up their custom machine shop out on the farm, and pay us a very decent percentage of their gross profits, in lieu of us charging any set rent for the building itself, and for all the power they'd expect to be using.

If anyone were to inquire about what they were doing, Lupe told me that we could say the machine shop was only being used to take care of our own farm needs, and that there were no outside commercial interests being served. Lupe told me that operations like this were very common down in Old Mexico, where avoiding taxes was second nature to the people living there, especially the ones with some skills, or who made any product they could sell at a profit.

I went to Rob and ran my understanding of Lupe and Raul's proposition past him. I told him the farm was assured of at least $25,000.00 a year in rental income, as well as reimbursement for any extra electrical power costs we'd have. Lupe told me we'd save a small fortune in maintenance costs too, with the machinists committed to handling all the farm's machining needs at their own pure cost.

At the time all this was being explained to me and negotiated, I wasn't aware that the two men would also be making their home on the farm. Lupe and Raul had neglected to cover that aspect of the plan. Later, after I discovered that fact, I was already so pleased with all the free work Ernesto and Felipe were doing on the farm, that I welcomed the increased availability made possible by having them living there 24/7.

They had gotten Lupe's construction crew nephews to build them a twenty by fifteen foot apartment inside the machine shop. Once I found out where they were living, I had them added to the newly created fourth eating shift, so they could take all their meals with the other farm residents.

I'd had no idea how much time and hassle having your own in house machine shop could save on getting farm equipment repaired in place, and thus put right back into service. I didn't pay close attention to all the work they were doing at the new shop, but I did notice quite a lot of traffic coming and going from the farm. Most of the trucks that came over with something that needed hurry up fixing were company trucks from some of the biggest farming operations in the area. The work they got usually came in early in the morning, and then went back out, completed, that same evening, even though it was sometimes late in the evening, before it was ready to be picked up.

I learned that a fifty dollar part could idle half a million dollars of farm machinery. Cost of machinery repair was secondary to them having the part repaired or replaced quickly, so that this expensive equipment didn't sit idle for very long. We had no expensive equipment like that on our farm, but it was certainly nice having access to newly machined replacement parts when something broke down. Not having to send someone into town for every little thing we needed, that saved us quite a lot of time and money as well.

Anita had been invited to come out to the farm to spend Christmas with her sister, and most of her family. Rob had gone ahead and purchased another expandable mobile home to put on that pad he'd asked me to put in. Lupe had come to me beforehand, asking my permission before inviting her to come out. This time, I'd actually hesitated before telling him it would be all right if she came out for the week that Lupe had requested for her.

Lupe and I were doing the grafting for the first four rows of new trees for the quarter section. The work wasn't too difficult, but it was time consuming. While Lupe worked on grafting, he was unavailable to perform the more complicated and demanding tasks on the farm. I knew I was being set up for something when he started complaining about all the time his helping with the plant grafting was taking away from his other duties.

"Let me guess, Lupe, you probably know someone who could do this grafting nearly as well as you do it, and he or she wouldn't cost us very much to have working here. How am I doing so far?"

"You too smart for Lupe, Jefe. But is true what you tell Lupe. Anita work here and do this good like me. I keep her away from Jefe. You not seeing her if no want to. Maria say need put meat on Anita's bones. She no eat good. Family very worry for her. She no trouble for you, Lupe make big promise."

"Now I know where Theresa and Anita get their stubborn persistence from. I know I'm going to get bugged about this from both you and Maria, until I either go crazy, or else agree to have her stay here. If I allow this, I'll expect both you and Maria to keep your word to me about her keeping to herself. I don't want to be bumping into Anita every time I turn around. If it turns out that I am, I'll come to you and tell you it isn't working out for me, and that she has to leave. Agreed?"

"Si, Jefe, just like you say. You not know she here, you see. She work here by self. She sleep, she eat, but only in trailer. Quiet, like mouse. We tell this Anita. She good this time, not like Anita before. You see, Jefe. Good this time."

I felt suddenly tired walking back to my house after this conversation with Lupe. The woman hadn't even set her foot back on the farm yet, and already she was making me feel tired and worn out again. I knew I'd given in too easily, but I also knew I'd wanted an excuse to give in.

I just found it difficult to understand why I'd wanted to. I thought back to an earlier conversation I'd had with Anita. I wondered if my genes would be passed to my children, rendering them unable to not continually want to play with fire? Anita had already set me on fire on several occasions. What was it about her that made me willing to allow myself to probably get lit up again? If I wasn't already so worried, I'd be laughing at myself. Laughing about what I'd just so willingly set myself up for.

When Rob heard about what I'd said to Lupe, and what I'd agreed to, he did all my laughing for me. Theresa surprised me when she offered her opinion that Anita and I were just not meant to be. She pointed out that she and Rob seldom fought, or even so much as argued with each other. Rob and I both laughed at her ridiculous claim. For her to make that particular claim, she had to be totally oblivious to what was being said, or what was going on around her. Maybe that was the answer, perhaps she just interpreted everything differently than Rob and I did. No other explanation fit what she'd just said to us.

I knew when Anita first came back to the farm. I just happened to be upstairs in my office, standing next to the one window that gave me a clear view of the front yard. I saw Raul and Consuela pull up in front of Lupe and Maria's trailer in their ancient Ford crew cab pick up. I saw Anita sitting all alone in the back seat. Once again, she looked like she'd lost quite a bit of weight. I had already heard that she had sold off her long hair, to a wig manufacturer, but seeing her with hair that was much shorter than I'd ever imagined it being came as quite a shock. Even skinny as she was though, and with her hair not much longer than my own, she was still very attractive to me. Seeing her again, I knew I'd made a big mistake in having agreed to let her come back to live on the farm.

I was keeping myself well back from the window, almost sure that Anita would look over to see if I was somewhere in the house watching her. I had given into temptation by waiting at the window in order to see her once again. It was a worrying sign of weakness in the firm resolve I supposedly had. I knew this was a serious setback to the plans I'd made to just get on with my life without her.

Now, I found myself once again caught out in the middle of a raging ongoing conflict I'd been having with myself. Mentally, I was absolutely certain that Anita and I could never be together, not in any permanent, romantic, sense. Emotionally, for whatever reason, I found myself unable to completely let her go. This conflict was wearing on me. I had been having it for more than a year already, and seemed no closer to resolving it then I ever had been.

I knew this was a self contained conflict. I was battling with myself, and, with some of my recent decisions, like allowing her to come back to the farm, I was stacking the deck against myself. Realizing this, I felt ashamed of myself, because of the glaring lack of maturity and self control this decision had exposed in me. I knew I had too many people depending on me to be able to indulge myself like I had been doing.

This thing with Anita was over. I had to just accept that it was, and then move on. Anything less than that would put in jeopardy everything I'd been hoping to accomplish. She and I would never be happy together. Our personalities just couldn't mesh in a healthy way, and this was something all good relationships needed to have.

Rob had tried to warn me that I was the problem as far as letting go of Anita went. He said I had to find whatever justification I needed, whatever it took that would allow me to let her go, and then just go ahead and use what I'd come up with. He told me I needed to be the one who walked away, with no regrets. He didn't tell me how to do that though, and I knew I'd have to be the one who actually found a way.

Lupe's estimate of yield at harvest was only a little bit too high. Instead of 1,500 pounds per acre, we netted out at 1,460 per acre. The mixture of top to premium held steady, and our cull percentage was cut in half because the wider catch net kept a lot of the harvest from ever touching the ground and discoloring the shells of the dropped nuts. In any event, income from the crop sales was far and away the highest it had ever been.

Rob and I knew there would be a very lean year at the next harvest, but we'd so far exceeded what we had pencilled in for income from the current harvest that our reserve was increased enough that we could weather one poor harvest with ease.

One thing we did decide to spend a bit of money on was for much more irrigation equipment, and also, for two good used nut harvesters. We really needed every sprinkler roller, pipe, and soaking hose we went out and purchased. We needed all of it, just to take care of the new acreage.

Because, of the continuing economic downturn, Lupe and I were able to buy everything we needed, at what could only be called ridiculously low prices. Most of it came from farm liquidation auctions being held all over the San Joaquin Valley to the North. As bad as things were for agriculture down where we were, they were several times worse for the farmers in one of the most fertile agricultural valleys in the world. Once again, the lack of availability of cheap irrigation water had sent many farming operations plummeting into foreclosure.

I ended up paying forty eight hundred dollars for both nut harvesters, and that included the delivery expenses all the way down to our farm. Effectively, in the past year, we'd again doubled the size of our farm. We'd planted the first forty acres of the quarter section, and were planning on planting an addition forty acres in the coming year. In the midst of an economic downturn that now rivalled that of the Great Depression, Rob and I had somehow managed to build an operation, and a farm family, that had made such growth possible.

Rob's optimism and vision were responsible for our having grown from the original eighty acres under cultivation we had jointly inherited. I tended to be much more conservative and timid then he was. I was better at being able to see the work that needed doing, and to pitch in to get a lot of it done with my own two hands, but, if it had been left up to me, I knew the farm would still consist of the original ninety acres.