Read Online The Orange Curtain by John Shannon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Shannon
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point exactly. So you’re interested in the Industrial League?”
“Uh-huh. Sounds like some socialist party back at the turn-of-the-century.”
“Odd name, isn’t it? Heel!” The dog had scampered hard off the path toward a big sumac that was crackling, and then the animal started making a peeved sound from the back of its throat. “Probably a rabbit. You’re going to need a little background first.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Before the war this county was a feudal kingdom, with a few villages like Anaheim and San Juan Capistrano scattered between the big ranches of the landed gentry. The Irvines, the O’Neals, the Segerstroms, a few others. The ranchos all started as Spanish land grants but Anglos moved in, married the older daughters and the rest is history. With the post-war boom, the bean fields and orange groves turned into tract homes, and power slowly shifted to real estate and chambers of commerce. Nobody ever gives up power without a fight and in the 1950s we had the last hurrah of the landed gentry. The fights were over land-use, of course, and slow-growth measures. But growth won, as it generally will.”
One of the jets shrieked past and all his hair stood on end. He’d never seen enough of the war so it constituted a sense memory out of the past, but he still didn’t like it. Sweat broke out on his forehead though the temperature couldn’t have been much over sixty.
“Man, I hate that.” He was frozen in his tracks, and when he looked up Marty Spence was watching him. The second jet followed, just as loud with full afterburner flaring. He could understand wanting to shoot them down. In fact, he wouldn’t have trusted himself with a shoulder-launch SAM right then.
“Viet Nam, huh?”
“Just a little. I only got caught in a few days of combat at Tet, but it was plenty.”
“Sometimes I regret missing the seminal experience of our generation. I was finishing grad school, and then I was too old.”
“Yeah, well. The principal human experience of everybody’s generation is dying, but it’ll keep.”
He turned and watched the sleek jets circle far out over the sea of tract homes. El Toro Air Base spread immediately below with a big X of runways and a deep green golf course, the two essentials of a military air base.
“We were up to the ’50s.”
“Sure. That was when the big boys started moving into the county with a vengeance. National corporations, a lot of electronics companies fleeing their unions. Medical technology, information companies, warehousing, Fortune 500 subsidiaries. Some of them even had headquarters here, like the international construction giant Fluor. They don’t have quite the same interests as the local businessmen. For example, there was a bitter fight over growing the county’s commercial airport, John Wayne Airport down between Newport and Irvine. The big boys want the infrastructure to fly in their Japanese customers, the little boys live down there under the 100-decibel runways. That was probably the last gasp of the small capitalists. Big generally beats small, as we all know. What they did to win was set up extra-governmental planning bodies like the County Transport Commission to escape the fiddling of local governments and control the things they really cared about.”
“The Industrial League?”
“That was where the game was played. It was set up in 1970 by executives of the big corporations, ostensibly to boost business. In fact, it was to fight the chambers of commerce, who were controlled by local business.” He looked back and grinned. “I love my job. It’s like watching medieval tournaments, big armies meeting out on the plain with their visors down, and trying to figure out who’s wearing the black insignia on their chest armor and who’s in the red.”
They reached a rock outcrop near the crest of the first range of the rolling hills below Saddleback, and they sat side by side just off the trail. His heart thumped a bit.
“Uh-huh. Sounds like some socialist party back at the turn-of-the-century.”
“Odd name, isn’t it? Heel!” The dog had scampered hard off the path toward a big sumac that was crackling, and then the animal started making a peeved sound from the back of its throat. “Probably a rabbit. You’re going to need a little background first.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Before the war this county was a feudal kingdom, with a few villages like Anaheim and San Juan Capistrano scattered between the big ranches of the landed gentry. The Irvines, the O’Neals, the Segerstroms, a few others. The ranchos all started as Spanish land grants but Anglos moved in, married the older daughters and the rest is history. With the post-war boom, the bean fields and orange groves turned into tract homes, and power slowly shifted to real estate and chambers of commerce. Nobody ever gives up power without a fight and in the 1950s we had the last hurrah of the landed gentry. The fights were over land-use, of course, and slow-growth measures. But growth won, as it generally will.”
One of the jets shrieked past and all his hair stood on end. He’d never seen enough of the war so it constituted a sense memory out of the past, but he still didn’t like it. Sweat broke out on his forehead though the temperature couldn’t have been much over sixty.
“Man, I hate that.” He was frozen in his tracks, and when he looked up Marty Spence was watching him. The second jet followed, just as loud with full afterburner flaring. He could understand wanting to shoot them down. In fact, he wouldn’t have trusted himself with a shoulder-launch SAM right then.
“Viet Nam, huh?”
“Just a little. I only got caught in a few days of combat at Tet, but it was plenty.”
“Sometimes I regret missing the seminal experience of our generation. I was finishing grad school, and then I was too old.”
“Yeah, well. The principal human experience of everybody’s generation is dying, but it’ll keep.”
He turned and watched the sleek jets circle far out over the sea of tract homes. El Toro Air Base spread immediately below with a big X of runways and a deep green golf course, the two essentials of a military air base.
“We were up to the ’50s.”
“Sure. That was when the big boys started moving into the county with a vengeance. National corporations, a lot of electronics companies fleeing their unions. Medical technology, information companies, warehousing, Fortune 500 subsidiaries. Some of them even had headquarters here, like the international construction giant Fluor. They don’t have quite the same interests as the local businessmen. For example, there was a bitter fight over growing the county’s commercial airport, John Wayne Airport down between Newport and Irvine. The big boys want the infrastructure to fly in their Japanese customers, the little boys live down there under the 100-decibel runways. That was probably the last gasp of the small capitalists. Big generally beats small, as we all know. What they did to win was set up extra-governmental planning bodies like the County Transport Commission to escape the fiddling of local governments and control the things they really cared about.”
“The Industrial League?”
“That was where the game was played. It was set up in 1970 by executives of the big corporations, ostensibly to boost business. In fact, it was to fight the chambers of commerce, who were controlled by local business.” He looked back and grinned. “I love my job. It’s like watching medieval tournaments, big armies meeting out on the plain with their visors down, and trying to figure out who’s wearing the black insignia on their chest armor and who’s in the red.”
They reached a rock outcrop near the crest of the first range of the rolling hills below Saddleback, and they sat side by side just off the trail. His heart thumped a bit.
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