Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Victor Davis Hanson Page A

paperwork. So I shrug and spend a day clearing out the mess from the vineyard, picking up the glass, plastic car parts, broken stakes and decapitated vines. Then in winter I replant rootings and wait three years for them to bear - and write off the lost income and added expense. If I tell the officer who investigates the accident that I wish he had at least apprehended the criminal, he usually sighs off the record, "What would it matter? When we do catch them they have no license, no registration and no insurance - and it's a hassle to call the INS anyway." One time, and one time alone, the CHP officer arrested the miscreant in my devastated vineyard. Why? Before he plowed into my vines, he had sideswiped a county bridge down the road. Three feet of aluminum railing remained enmeshed in his grill - proof, as it were, that the State of
California
itself had been attacked by this illegal alien and therefore was finally within its rights to jail him and sell off his wrecked car.
    I once got a chain and tried to drag the wreckage out with my tractor to impound it for scrap metal - until I was told by the authorities on the scene that this constituted "theft" and I must leave the demolished car in my vineyard until the county tow arrived to cart it away and store it in case the owner should later try to reclaim it. The law seems to say that the vehicle of the illegal alien who destroyed thousands of dollars' worth of vines is more sacrosanct than the property of the citizen.
    About once a month I also systematically clear the roadside of trash - not just the usual beer bottles, tires and occasional fast food debris that accumulates as if by a law of nature, but entire plastic bags of foul wet garbage, soiled diapers and assorted household items: plastic toys, dishes, boxes and magazines. Sometimes the litter is tossed well into the orchard, where it pops tractor tires and clogs the cultivator. About once every six months, sofas, beds, televisions, washers and dryers, and entire bedroom sets and dirty mattresses appear on our property. If they are clustered in piles, they must be removed within hours. Otherwise the neglected flotsam suggests laxity, and laxity sends the message that the road by or through our farm has become a free dump.
    Twice I have caught the dumpers, who despite curses agreed to pick up their offal. Twice I have found receipts in the trash for power or other bills, and so have had the sheriff track down the owners and order them to come back and clean up the mess. But mostly I just pick it up and forget about who did it. This pastoral drama is endless, despite the fact that city garbage pickup is cheap, and county dumps are not uncommon. There are even plenty of big dumpsters in shopping centers. Yet for some reason - perhaps it is an atavism from the old country where trash is everywhere dumped outside city limits? - illegal aliens still go out to the country to dump their refuse, furniture, cars and pets on farmland.
    We currently have three dogs and six cats - all strays that were found half-starved in the orchard and vineyard, most likely left there by aliens. (Where is PETA when one really needs it?) My wife saved one of our present cats after it was thrown out into the nectarine orchard; its siblings were quickly eaten by coyotes. After $200 of veterinarian care for shots, congestive heart failure and pneumonia, the poor creature is not only at home with the other adopted strays in our yard, but almost fat. Years earlier I nearly caught one woman who left a box of kittens - three dead, the other two hours away from it - by the mailbox. And speaking of this rural mailbox that I suppose has been standing by the side of our road for nearly a century, we no longer put our outgoing mad in it - having learned that the red flag is simply an invitation for someone to steal the envelopes before the postal carrier arrives. Sadly we are giving thought to ceasing rural postal service altogether, inasmuch as thieves