Victor Davis Hanson
For the first 50 years of my rural existence, I don’t think I encountered more than 10 trespassing cars parked in the orchards or vineyards (one a decade)—aside from the intoxicated drivers who left the main road, veered off the pavement, destroyed several trees or vines, and abandoned their automobiles or trucks (usually full of beer cans or wine bottles).
They were an odd bunch. Usually, the highway patrol came out and towed away the vehicle, insisting I could not have it impounded for any damage suffered. The insurance never covered the wreckage. The drivers never paid any compensation. In all five cases, the drivers spoke little if any English, and apparently in those days feared deportation if they stayed to claim their wrecked cars. The one time I towed a wreck with the tractor into the yard and chained it, I was told by the highway patrol officer that I was the offender and would be cited unless I released it, even though he said there was “zero” chance the claimant of the impounded car would ever pay for damages.
None to my knowledge suffered any personal injury since they ran quickly away. The ground always was soft given it was irrigated, disked, or furrowed. The wire of the vineyard usually hit the hood and gradually slowed the vehicle down as it passed through several rows.
In the case of the trees, the lower branches usually buffered the collision and were usually sheared off from the stump. The wrecks usually occurred on Sunday afternoons.
I used to calculate the loss of 10-15 vines or 3-4 trees for 3-4 years’ worth of production, the effort to clean away the mess, and replant, and then I computed the extra care needed to nurture replacement trees and vines in a mature vineyard or orchard. And the net cost again was several thousand dollars.
Yet other than these hit-and-run incidents, during my first half-century on the farm, I rarely encountered trespassers or criminals.
The few I bumped into on nightly walks were parked cars with teens having carnal relations or drinking beer or shooting illegally ducks or doves and quail, or simply trying to blast with shotguns great horned owls or red-tailed hawks for the sick sight of killing a noble bird. Misguided, vicious to animals, and reckless no doubt, but not necessarily criminals by any means. But again, any encounter was very rare.
In the last decade, everything has changed.
The collapse of rural calm can be calibrated by the growing influx from open borders, the flight of small farmers who sold out and moved away, the near complete transformation from homeowners to renters residing in the farmhouses of absentee corporate owners, and of course the decline of civilized life in the United States in general.
Now I expect each week to have one encounter with someone injecting drugs, fornicating, stealing, dumping trash, stripping down a stolen car, shooting a semi-automatic weapon, or horribile dictu beating his wife or girlfriend (apparently on the theory to do so in the country means no one will hear the cries of the assaulted; my one intervention saw both victim and victimizer threaten me, as her shrieking turned from him to me for interfering!).
Yet these last 10 days I had three unusual “encounters,” more so than in past years. The first was coming upon an industrial freezer—it must have weighed over 500 pounds—dumped in an orchard row. It would have required two or three people to toss it out of a truck.
What was the thinking, the rationale of the nocturnal dumpers? That someone else would cart their detritus away? That the $25 fee at the local dump was too costly? That it was their right to discard such a huge piece of junk on someone’s property, and thus the obligation of the owner to haul their cast-offs away?
Is the mindset one of entitlement? One of hatred? One of selfishness? One that the immigrant is exempt from the laws and obligations of the citizen?
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