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He was a big drinker, a big liver who loved the fast life. The checks the workers bring in here from Mr. Resnick are the same checks they bring in for years. But western Kern has no groundwater to draw from. Over the years, they had donated large sums of money to political campaigns, and some of it went to Republicans who had pledged to prop up California agriculture. Sugar kills, she tells them. During the holiday season, they sent out 4,000 gift boxes to their nearest and dearest friends filled with their fruits and nuts, along with a card of the two of them dressed in skin-colored body stockings, posing as Adam and Eve. One way or the other, we got rid of our last farm a few years before I was born and moved to the Fresno suburbs. He blames Iran. Im in another land, an expanse of hard, ugly, cratered-out earth the color of sand. Its going to be what its going to be. The aqueduct was built with tax money, yes? Its California., Sure. He only needed to find groundwater from another basin to replace the state aqueduct water he had just sold. What he knows is that Wonderful is buying up to 50,000 acre-feet of water a year in a series of hidden deals. The wildfires cant be far behind. The curtains were made of a fabric woven in Venice and substantial enough that they might finish off a person who happened to be looking out the window in the throes of an earthquake. She gestures to the young students in the front row, the ones enrolled in the ag-prep classes, and asks them to stand up and take a bow. His father grew grapes, cherries, and apricots in the Santa Clara Valley back when Stanford University still had a reason to be known as The Farm. When it goes into full effect, in a decade or two, more than a million acres of cropland across the valley will have to be retired. Get an email notification whenever someone contributes to the discussion. Each face wears its own weary. On this same stretch of 99, I once wrote a story about farmworkers who moonlighted as meth cookers to make ends meet. Each mound is fed into an even bigger machine whose teeth pulverize the trees and make sawdust. His frat brother got bored, as rich boys do, and Resnick bought out his half interest for $300. The compass in my car says Im headed east, but that means almost nothing inside a province of 15 million trees. ", "I don't know why the county can't work with Sandridge (Vidovich's company) and suggest other locations because it's going to cause the county significant issues in terms of air quality Kings County doesn't have the best," said Gornick. But when the Kings does flood, as its doing now, millions of acre feet rush north to join up with the San Joaquin River and empty into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. I had in mind a magazine profile on Stewart, the Nut King. This isnt the Lynda posing for photos with Barbra Streisand. Lynda is making the trip on the company jet more often these days. I want to know that what we built will continue into the future.. Still, none of it would have happened without luck., What he and Lynda had done with the wretched pomegranate was another matter. Burglar alarms, on the other hand, offered round-the-clock vigilance without coffee breaks. Bruce Springsteen turned it into a song on his Ghost of Tom Joad album. It wouldnt even make a couple of sections of his almonds. I get out of the car and walk down an embankment. Typically, each pound sells wholesale for $4.25. The control Resnick exercises inside his $4.5 billion privately held company does relinquish to one person: his wife, Lynda, vice chairman and co-owner, the Pomegranate Queen, as she calls herself. All of it was Lyndas doing, of course. Shes designing the school. But if its the tube that Im looking to follow, I must drive through the almond grove. Lost Hills finally has something to be proud about. What happens to Wonderful? You rely on Marketplace to break down the worlds events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. In the city of trees, I find a paved road with speed bumps that takes me to the harvest of pistachios. I dont know how Hershey did Hershey, Pennsylvania, but Lynda is present in every painted sunburst, every planted flower, every blade of grass. He turns out to be a kindly religious man whose short hair is dyed the black of shoe polish. Here and there a mulberry tree, its canopy pruned back, breaks up the red-smeared sky.. It was the early spring of 2008, and this time his secretary didnt hang up on me. You have permission to edit this article. In the summer of 2010, hed spent several days documenting the deplorable conditions of the modern company town. I ask him how the drought has affected Wonderful. I retrace the road I came in on and cross old Tulare Lake, which rose by flood and sank by drought. In the distant background, under the gaze of a 10-foot-tall marble goddess, sat Stewart in a gold-skirted chair, head down. But that still doesnt mean that most people in town can afford to eat here. Have we gone too far? "A small farmer, if he gets his whole limit, it keeps him in business, whereas for us, it's a very small fraction of our revenue," Vidovich said. To manage the disease. In the late 1970s, he went looking for a hedge against inflation. The sale got under the skin of valley farmers. Then one day, he was trying to find a marketing person and got a call from Lynda Sinay, who worked in advertising. Sandridge Partners, L.P. Business Data He emptied the sky of tens of millions of geese and drained the 800 square miles of Tulare Lake dry. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.. Hes so involved, in fact, he even chairs the monthly meetings for Buena Vista Water Storage District where Sandridge owns thousands of acres. Stewart was the second of their four children, the only boy. Its been more than a year since the grand opening, and theyre still operating in the red. Pink and white oleanders divide the highway, and every third vehicle that whooshes by is a big rig. Back then, the Los Angeles Times had a bureau in the middle of California. In the maroon of sundown,I follow the workers back to Lost Hills. The space for a familys secrets is only a few feet. The July sun is a scorcher, and I fuss with the dial on the AC long enough to blow past the towns one stoplight and the aqueduct, too. No longer does it have to be a career that brings Mexicans to their hands and knees. Im down.. But a pipeline, which Vidovich is allowed to build under the Semitropic agreement, could span that distance. He said he bought his first parcel here in 1994 when he invested in a foreclosed property in Kings County. I applaud, too. Arax: They lose their livelihood. There she stood in the foreground of the photo that accompanied a New Yorker profile titled Pomegranate Princess. She was wearing a black pantsuit with open-toed silver pumps and a single piece of jewelry around her neck. Her husband, Manuel, will awaken in 30 minutes to prepare for his night shift. On our trips to Disneyland, I must have blinkered my eyes heading down 99. But that doesnt make people buy a second bottle. Everything about our physical selves, Lynda believes, begins in our guts. They hide from the fact that it relies on the subjugation of peasants from Mexico they themselves have brought here. I notice she keeps the water running for a long time. She divorced her husband in 1968 and began dating Anthony Russo, who worked at the RAND think tank in Santa Monica with military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. The hospital, senior citizens center, and football stadium all bore the signature of his giving. Be Proactive. She is small with lively brown eyes and a sweet but confident voice. John Vidovich just wants to farm, he says. Who would have thought that people would be asking their bartender to fix them a Pomtini? he said. Month after month, she made ends meet on a $1,600 budget. Like a lot of empires, it comes to an end., So what about you? I ask. It then dawned on him that guards were good, but they had to be paid an hourly wage. Cotton still grows on the lake bottom, but less and less each year. Kings Officials Unhappy About Water Proposal, Local Water Guys Eyeing Kings River Flood Water. Because of a lack of water? I ask. He guides me to the caf, and we grab our lunches from the buffet. The citrus is still handpicked but all the nuts are machine picked, and thats idled workers as well. A dozen or so U.S.-grown crops are traded as commodities on the stock market, and the greatest subsidies go to corn, wheat, cotton, soybean and rice. Shoving aside the coins, they introduced a Scarlett OHara doll that, by itself, raked in $35 million in sales. Before he died at age 86, J.G. Theres a lot happening in the world. The State Water Project that allowed western Kern County to grow into a farming behemoth has given no water or very little water over the past three years amid the worst drought in California history. The big man with the goatee behind the wheel is Bernard Puget, a Basque sheepmans son who oversees these orchards. Vidovich has more than one reason to be evasive. He came to California in the 1950s to remake himself. John Vidovich is VP/Executive Director:Sales at Student Loan Corp. See John Vidovich's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. The wind kicks up dirt from the reap of oil and almonds, and the dust cloud carries back into town, raining down on the elementary school first. Theres a section stacked with weights and a yoga room with mats on a hardwood floor. Its the beginning of September 2016, and battalions of heavy machinery dispatched from the Wonderful equipment yards pound the ground and rattle the trees. Residential. But inside he had these weaknesses. 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In any event, Vidovich fallowed his Angiola land and took its groundwater about 25 miles west to his Dudley Ridge lands. All Rights Reserved. On the way out, the voice in their head, Lyndas voice, goads them to give one more hour to the Wonderful Fitness Center. Order finds itself through action. I did not name the town, Lynda says. For a silent minute, we dig into our bowls. My husband would have been shot dead like the others, but he was lucky. No stranger enters this zone unless its to get rid of a body or dump waste from cooking meth or drown a hot car. He grew up in New Jersey, where his father ran a bar. Scott: How sustainable is this operation given that California only recently came out of a long drought and may actually be headed there again soon? 650) 397-5213 with any questions or to learn more. What the Resnicks were doing for Lost Hills, though, was a level of philanthropy I had never witnessed in the valley. Not long before, Vidovich was trying to grab water from Resnick, not give it. That was four years ago. Now in farming, were in a unique position. It becomes scorn because they cant allow it to become pity or self-hatred. A California developer, farmer, and water buyer, John Vidovich, is seeking approval to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore on what appears to be a 789-acre project located along Highway 41, just south of Highway 198. What do you need to know, sir?, Whats it been like here during the drought?, Drought, no drought, makes no difference. He and Lynda wanted to run their own ads for their own brand. When a copy found its way to The New York Times, Lynda was pursued by federal prosecutors until they concluded she was more dilettante than radical. He says he doesnt feel sorry for Resnick. But those 20,000 acres near the town of Pixley came with an endowment: a little spit of earth that produced endless amounts of groundwater. A meat store, an auto repair, a pool hall, and an arcade pass for a commercial strip. His second son is a psychiatrist. why teaching is challenging yet rewarding Inside, a Wonderful media specialist sees that Resnick needs to be rescued. Its happening. The bosses wont speak of it, he says. The sellers include farmers in the Tulare Lake basin who are pumping so much water out of the ground that the levees protecting the town of Corcoran are sinking, not by inches but by feet. His first wife, the mother of his two sons and daughter, told him she was quite happy living in their $30,000 condo in Culver City. I learned back then that our farmers thought the whole world was out to screw them. The borough measured no more than 2 square miles. Ultimately,youre going to dry up that aquifer under the earth, and thats whats happening now. They dumped their stolen car into the canals black waters and got away with murder for the next 32 years. He sold a chunk of land to the builders of Sunnyvale and decided he could develop the rest himself. They were married only a short time when Manuel decided to cross the border almost 20 years ago. From the east side of Tulare County to the west side of Fresno County, theyre planting more nuts and Halos. A large water pipeline being built near Lemoore in Kings County is raising eyebrows as much for its possible uses as for the name associated with its construction John Vidovich. We're not trying to stop enterprise, okay," he added, suggesting that Lemoore's citizens, over the years, have invested heavily in Lemoore and might have problems with a feedlot and slaughterhouse within shouting distance of the city's population. What is the phone number of Vidovich John - De Anza Properties? His face is blank. Ever since I was a kid, I have felt its pulla gravitational presence on the land and in my own story. His grandfather Resnick had fled the Ukraine in the wake of another killing of Jews by Cossacks. The 5.3 acres are so flawless and at odds with the town that the whole thing feels like a movie set. The water is filtered for arsenic, boron, and other salts, and the monthly tests show no violation of state or federal standards. A member of the commission, on the eve of its demise, told me, Stewart wants to be a benevolent dictator. Now its the seven-week nut harvest that brings out the inhalers. One out of eight has diabetes. We were asleep at the wheel. By car and foot, I trace the silver pipeline as it creeps north through Wonderful pomegranate orchards. I follow one of the engines of harvest as it rolls into an orchard like a tank. EDMUND JOHN VIDOVICH Lake Havasu City, Arizona Trinitas Partners LLC Investment Management Redwood City, California CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ALMOND GROWERS ASSN. john vidovich documentary. The dispute over the no fly zone was finally resolved by the invention of a netting that Resnick sheathes around his mandarins each spring. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. He was tough on the outside. I head straight into the glare of the sun shooting over the Coast Range. His bar was a place for guys, Damon Runyontype guys., Resnicks pals were all Jewish kids from upper-class families, so it wasnt easy being the poorest one, the one whose father was a gambler and capable at any moment of losing the few comforts they had. John L Vidovich, 65. It sure looks heavier than last year., Bernard smiles and nods to the others. Number two, Angiola is trying to maintain the local aquifer by retiring land to limit pumping. He doesnt feign surprise when I tell him about the pipeline, but he dismisses it as a private matter between private parties. At the core, though, the Resnicks were still moved by the duty of social justice, not just as traditional liberals but as secular Jews. This was the same road that took me to Selma, the raisin capital of the world, to pack peaches and plums for Mel Girazian, my fathers old friend. He guides me back into the main store with its displays of fresh fruit and vegetables, meats, cold cuts, and baked goods. Or at least thats the way Vidovich puts it when I finally reach him. If he sticks even a toe onto her turf, says a former business partner, she gives him a look that sends him right back.. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. According to Lemoore's city manager, local officials will likely respond to the feedlot proposal at Tuesday's (Jan. 18) council meeting. The proposed project has raised local eyebrows. And in fact these guys were able to squeeze and buy water in the open market, and do a few other things to keep their crops going and they were in the midst of drought. Of all the property available in Kings County, I'm not sure why he chose that property. Deadly in the rush of harvest, deadly in the quiet of fog, deadly in the blur of Saturday nights when the fieldwork is done and the beer drinking becomes a second humiliation. Developer, farmer and water trader John Vidovich plans to build a beef feedlot and processing plant near Lemoore according to a preliminary application filed with the county. I didnt see our creation, much less the figures bent under the canopies of vine that our creation counted on. He was short, bull-like, and didnt take crap from anyone. Hes planting ground that no one has ever planted before. She was a very frugal lady. Because its so much fun to say that Lost Hills has been found., The room full of growers applauds. Dont let his boots, blue jeans, and ball cap fool you, the old-timers say. Two strains of salmonella found in their pistachios had caused a multistate outbreak of illnesses. I write an email to the Wonderful PR team. A minute later, I reconnect with the pipeline and pursue its length for a football field. He was the bad guy in agriculture for no bigger offense than that he was big. I try again to pin him down, but hes a man who likes to think of himself as wily. A lot of it is undocumented and they are in these sort of company towns that you describe that are maybe even more sort of dedicated to the company than most. A worker can still order a hamburger, but its half the size of the old hamburger and costs $6twice what the wild salmon served with creamed leeks and raw asparagus salad costs. His father, Stephen Vidovich, formed De Anza Properties and helped develop the valley. Resnick wanted no part in my story. These are donations from other farmworker families, but theyre not for her and Manuel and the kids. EIN: 41-0953924. All but a handful come from Mexico. Business got so brisk that he bought two trucks and hired crews.