Sketches of Overlooked America V.8
Mextler, CA
Mextler, CA is the geographical center of the San Joaquin Valley. Grapevines stretch in checkerboard squares across the flat trough of land that separates the Coastal Range from the Sierra Nevada. It’s hot in Mextler, and still. When the air moves it comes as a surprise.
Tracy Debnaum is the founder of EPAC, an environmental watchdog organization that monitors air quality. At the height of the drought in 2015, Mextler and the surrounding area measured an air quality of 10+ for 72 consecutive days, exceeding any other area — metropolitan or rural — in the nation. Ms. Debnaum has kept records of air quality over the last eight years, as well as rates of respiratory illness. Only El Centro is on par with Mextler in terms of prevalence of chronic asthma cases per capita.
Outside EPAC’s office in the crepuscular dim, Ms. Debnaum pulls a pack of cigarettes from her purse. Leaning her head back against the stone of the building she takes a drag, exhaling a vertical plume. She stows her lighter back in her purse where it knocks against her asthma inhaler. She looks at her watch and waits.
Downtown Mextler lies dormant in the summer evening. Haze and dust from the industrial farms of the Central Valley assure that each sunset is apocalyptic. The effect is stunning, the red sky silhouetting the decaying palm trees of Cesar Chavez Blvd.
The population of Mextler ebbs and flows with the harvest. Ernesto Jimenez walks out of the Carniceria Mercadito, dinner ensconced in a paper bag. Mr. Jimenez is twenty-seven and lives for half the year in the Sunrise Labor Camp. The camp resembles a motel in a way — several duplexes are arranged in a horseshoe shape around a grassy commons. A children’s play structure sits in the middle. Clotheslines stand end-to-end across the property. Mr. Jimenez has been coming here each summer for the past four years. In the gloaming, the radiant heat pulses from the asphalt.
By daybreak, Mr. Jimenez has been awake for three hours. On a weekday, he will wake at 4:30, study the bible for a half-hour, and then commute to the almond orchard where he works alongside most of the residents of Sunrise Labor Camp. The orchards are in shade until 9:00, and the trees in full leaf keep Mr. Jimenez sheltered from the sun. In the front pocket of his Levi’s is a locket. In the locket are two photos, one of his daughter, a precocious girl of four with headful of black hair and one of his wife, Marta, still in Hermosillo. Back at his duplex Mr. Jimenez keeps a wall calendar where he marks off the days of summer with red Sharpie, a countdown to October 17th, the day he returns to his family.
One block east of city hall is the Church of Santa Magdelena. It is the oldest structure in Mextler, dating to 1898, when it was established by two Jesuit brothers who were traveling from Los Angeles to Sacramento. The chapel is built of granite, quarried from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, just southwest of Yosemite. The structure is stout and austere, many of the embellishments commonly associated with Catholic architecture conspicuously absent. The square façade gleams scarlet in the sunset, a mirror of polished stone.
Father Absel Guttenburg returns from the mercado and stops in front of the church he’s presided over for the last two decades. The building still inspires reverence within him, the same way the cathedrals of Europe did in his youth. He walks past the front doors of his workplace and treads across a yellowing lawn. The sprinkler system is broken, and what with the water rationing, the lawn has suffered. Behind the granite building is Father Guttenburg’s living quarters, a three-room bungalow. The Father passes through the front door, and pauses before a framed photo of Pope Benedict XIV. Somewhere in his home is an homage to the current pontiff, but the previous Pope’s Teutonic heritage still engenders allegiance in the Father. At his kitchen table, Father Guttenburg empties his grocery bag and sets an LP of Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations on the turntable.
Susan Moncrieff is ninety years old. She moved to Mextler with her family during the great depression. The promise of a fertile valley chock-full with orchards and fields ripe with crops of every kind drew her parents from the plains of Kansas. Ms. Moncrieff has watched the evolution of her town from an agricultural outpost to commercial hub back into a backwater, dried out and ruined by drought and state water policy. She lives in a stately Victorian, modeled on the one from the film Giant. In the parlor is a curio containing the gold-trimmed Traje de luces once worn by noted matador Silvio el Gallo. In a drawer below is the Traje is el Gallo’s espada, laid out over his folded muleta. el Gallo has been dead for nineteen years. Ms. Moncrieff opens the drawer and runs her fingers along the golden needlework once worn to the applause of all Mexico. Ms. Moncrieff and Mr. el Gallo were married 54 years.
At the rear of the house, Ms. Moncrieff tends a garden. It’s a verdant circular arrangement kept alive by her fastidious care. Ms. Moncrieff’s hands and forehead bare marks of the sun which she embraced in her youth. She now hides her skin beneath full length sleeves and a brimmed hat of unusual circumference. She tends to her bed of snap peas and palms a red tomato, running a finger across its skin. Overhead two F-18s from Lemoore Naval Air Station streak through the sky.
The Mextler Slough runs north of town. The waterway is a wayward arm of the San Joaquin river. Merle Williamson fishes the brackish waters as often as he can. He grew up fishing for bass in the reedy shallows. At the north end of the waterway is a gravel parking lot with a wooden sign. The lettering is faded. There is a self-pay box which has not been used nor checked since 2007. In the early morning, Mr. Williamson dons his waders and moves in amongst the reeds. He will cast his line out and jig along the vegetated shore. The traffic from I-5 can be heard to the west. Somewhere northward comes the lowing of cattle from one of the industrial dairy farms. Nothing like the ones in the California Cheese commercials. Mr. Williamson looks eastward towards the Sierras. The sun has not yet crested the ridgeline. Mr. Williamson coughs into the crook of his elbow and takes a puff of levalbuterol.
Maggie Collims lives with her son in a half-finished housing tract that was abandoned by the developers in late 2008. Bank of America owns 2/3 of the homes, most devalued to the point of abandonment in the housing collapse. Ms. Collims has stayed, though, along with a handful of her neighbors. Her son Marcus loves the neighborhood, the dirt stair-steps of the graded lots making the perfect BMX track. Ms. Collims is a Nurse at the Fresno Valley Medical Center, a thirty minute commute. She’s considered moving to Fresno and can’t pinpoint the reason why she hasn’t. In her driveway her car is covered in a layer of fine, grey dust, kicked up by farm equipment and carried off into the atmosphere only to descend as particulate precipitation. Marcus draws figures in the dust or writes his name when he passes. Currently, the back window pleads wash me in the hand of an eight-year-old.
