Location & Wealth

There is a moment that stuck out to me in Chapter 10 of The Plum Plum Pickers where Manuel is compared to Gaspar de Portolá, the man who first laid eyes on the San Francisco Bay. Sweeney Ridge happens to be my favorite place to hike, and my home is maybe 5 miles away from the International Airport that can be seen from the top of the ridge. Barrio's description of the magnificent view and the overwhelming sense of unimportance that Manuel and Portolá felt is something that I can personally attest to. To the west, the Pacific Ocean spans to the horizon and beyond; to the north, the top of the Golden Gate Bridge can be seen peeking out over the Park, with the Marin Headlands on the other side spreading onward; to the south, the Santa Cruz Range spikes upwards and Linda Mar beach in Pacifica calls out on a sunny day; and to the east, the expanse of the Bay Area from San Francisco to San José fills the land. I always stand at the top of the ridge for a long while and have trouble leaving.
     Looking all around from the top of Sweeney Ridge, "both don Gaspar and don Manuel were landlords and landless at precisely the same instant of viewing all this heady beauty. And both were equally dispossessed (91)." I found myself thinking back to the description of Sweeney Ridge near the end of the novel when Mrs. Turner has a gathering with lots of wealthy ladies and they are saying such things as "Most people just can't afford three cars these days." The contrast is unsettling to me. The land surrounding the pickers once belonged to Mexico and the raw beauty is awe-inspiring and brings a sense of hope of what could come in the future, even though their present situation is likened to living like animals, or rather, worse than animals. At the same time, the WASPs who have invaded and taken over are complaining about how hard it is to keep more than two cars. The land that once was valued for its beauty is now nothing more than an investment to keep the rich happy. Turner mentions that he wants the Bay to be filled in so there could be more land to plant fruit and vegetable crops; it is clear that the natural splendor of the Bay means nothing to men like Turner. To Turner, the location of California is all about the wealth that he can suck out of it by any means necessary.