TULARE.....

When Daryl was fifteen he headed off to Lake Tahoe in the US with the Rotary Exchange Student Program. Then due to some amazing twist of fate (stuff up but let's put a posative spin on it), young Daryl ended up at the home of Glen and Carleen Lewis in a smallish agricultural town in the heart of The Central Valley named Tulare. Glen was at the time Principal of one of the local high schools and Carleen a teacher, but they also happened to live on a "walnut ranch", and so the love affair with that particular nut began!

Glen and Carleen embraced Daryl as if he was their own son, and so began a thirty year friendship that has seen many harvests, our own walnut farm up and running, marriages, babies and sadly losses with Carleen's passing this year. 

But the relationships formed through this one chance meeting are so far beyond just Daryl, Glen and Carleen and too complex and interwoven to go into here on my blog, but I picture a tornado where the relationships that began all those years ago still whip and weave around each other. I have to give an example.... After Daryl, Glen and Carleen had another student stay. His name was Pale and he was from Spain. Daryl and his brother Don visited Glen and Carleen

 during that year and met Pale. A couple of years later while visiting Spain, Daryl catches up with Pale and is introduced to Pale's friend Maria. Some time after that, Daryl's brother visits Pale in Spain and also meets Maria. They have now been married for about 16 years and have two children. That is just one example!

So back to our road trip to Tulare. I don't know why I love Tulare so much. It is a little run down in parts, it is flat, there is a strange haze like the sun is slightly filtered through smog coming up from LA, it is true farming country where the dairies are huge and the cattle barely see sunshine or grass, the cotton fields stretch on like a sea of white fluff and the walnut orchards are big and lush and shady. Must be the farmers wife in me. Of course the outlet shopping is sensational so that also hooks me! But I think this town had a big effect on Daryl, it was life changing and character forming. I imagine him there, working out in the field with Glen, playing high school football and asking Jennifer Sae to the Graduation Prom. 

It was my (and Phemie's) fifth visit to Tulare and I will never get tired of that amazing drive through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and then suddenly the mountains are behind you and the vast never ending plains of the Central Valley stretch before you. Until next time....