Avocados of Wrath: a Dirty Little War

It’s not much of an avocado grove. It wasn’t much of a theft.

But I planted that grove. I dug the irrigation lines by hand. I’ve nurtured those 138 trees through Santa Ana winds, searing summers and crippling frosts. I care.

So when Ken Lubas and I drove up to my home in Glendora one day last week to find a group of men--there turned out to be 11 of them--picking my avocados and loading them into their truck, I got upset.

Bursting from the car in a surge of righteous indignation, I confronted the culprits with a verbal assault that included some terse Anglo-Saxon phraseology.

They responded--in Spanish--that they did not understand English. They shrugged. They smiled. As fast as I pulled my precious avocados off the truck, they picked them up, dusted them off and put them back on board.

Ken, a photographer with a philosophical bent, watched it all with bemusement.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was going about it all wrong--that sooner or later, outnumbering us 11 to 2, they were going to win the battle of supply and demand. Maybe some other battles, too. And once they had finished, they would simply climb back on the truck and drive off with the avocados.

So I stole the truck.

It was pretty easy, really. While they were all in back, finishing up with the loading, I ran around to the front, jumped in the cab, started up the engine (the key was still in the ignition) and drove off, headed for the Glendora police station.

The whole group--well, almost the whole group, as it turned out--just stood there aghast. Ken, sensing that his welcome was waning, jumped back in his car and gave chase.

As I headed down the main drag, feeling pretty good about myself, I watched the image of the truck flashing past in the storefront windows. There I was at the wheel. And there, to my surprise, were three of the culprits in back, amusing themselves by making vulgar finger gestures to the passengers in an RTD bus that was more or less keeping pace.

I stepped on the gas, determined they would not jump to freedom. Accelerating through the main intersection in town, I sped down the block and screeched to the curb in front of the police station.

Adrenaline still pumping, I leaped out of the cab and warned my three passengers not to flee. In English.

Grinning pleasantly, they climbed slowly off the truck and strolled casually down the street, explaining as they left that they still did not understand me. In Spanish.

I told the desk officer what had happened, gave him the ignition key and showed him the avocados stashed in the back of the truck. He said that since no one’s life was in peril, I would have to wait for the next available investigator.

After half an hour or so, the policeman said I could go home--that a cop would stop by later to make a report. Ken drove me back up the hill, where we found the eight men we’d left behind still sitting there by the road.

Two of them finally wandered up to the house to ask where the truck was. When I told them, they all started trudging down the road toward town. Suddenly, they understood English, at least a little.

Five minutes later, officer R. T. Nomura, a thoughtful man, arrived to take a report. I told him that eight of the culprits had just left.

“What do you want done?” he asked.

I suddenly realized that I hadn’t thought the whole thing through.

“I just want them to say they’re sorry,” I replied.

Half an hour later, the truck chugged back up the hill and pulled to a halt in front of the grove. The men piled out and formed a line in front of me.

“I’m sorry. We won’t do it again,” each man said in turn. In broken English.

“It’s OK,” I replied. In broken Spanish.

Then they drove off.

It wasn’t until half an hour later that I realized they still had the avocados.