Come on In, the Mud and the...

Come on In, the Mud and the Surfing Is Great

I am in Temecula, six miles north of the San Diego-Riverside county line, to observe mud surfing.

Repeat: mud surfing, a mix of cowboy and cow-a-bunga.

“We invented the sport here,” explains Buck Kemmis, mud surfing chairman for this year’s 14th annual Great Temecula Tractor Race. “So far, it hasn’t caught on in the rest of the world.”

The trick is to stay upright on a bale of hay towed by a tractor through a 150-foot-long mud puddle. Then jump off and unload six more bales from a pickup truck.

It’s part of a bash that includes mud bogging, barbecue, pig races, arm wrestling, country-Western music, a lizard show, kiddie carnival and elephant rides. It will be Oct. 5-7, but a preview was held Saturday.

These are pioneer folk.

Not so long ago, Temecula was just a hot, dry, sparsely populated stretch of land south of nowhere.

Now it’s a growing city of 20,000 (with another 35,000 in the surrounding area), part of the great maw of subdivisions and shopping centers marching down Interstate 15.

A year from now, the wide-open site of the Great Temecula Tractor Race is slated to be a business park. (One of several already built or being planned.)

If the Great Temecula Tractor Race has a historical antecedent, it’s probably the square dance in “Oklahoma,” where ranchers and farmers try to put aside their economic and political differences.

Saturday’s preview featured several grudge matches, including a tractor race between the mayors of Temecula and Lake Elsinore. The latter is sore because the new phone book left Lake Elsinore’s name off the cover.

If the preview is prologue, the Great Temecula Tractor Race will have a joyousness that may seem alien to San Diegans, accustomed as we are to endlessly dour debates about the evils of growth.

Here, just a few miles from our border, lives a race of suburbanites who are in the midst of explosive growth and seem to be enjoying the heck out of it, mud-surfing and all.

Imagine that.

Politics and Money

Here’s a small lesson in money and politics at San Diego City Hall.

Phil Blair and Tom Carter are seeking reappointment to the board of the Centre City Development Corp., the City Council’s redevelopment arm.

Each is talking to council members. Each talked to Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt.

The talk was of downtown issues: housing, hotels and the homeless. Bernhardt brought up another topic: her campaign debt.

She asked both Carter and Blair to help her retire her $90,000 campaign debt.

As she tries to whittle down the largest debt ever incurred by a San Diego council member, Bernhardt spends a lot of her time looking for money:

“Probably three-quarters of the people I call (for fund-raising help) could appear before the City Council for a vote or could be coming to my office for assistance.”

Carter and Blair are among the city’s best political fund-raisers. Blair, who owns an employment agency, raises money for Republicans; Carter, a financial consultant, raises mostly for Democrats.

Each declined Bernhardt’s request.

Carter said he’s already helping statewide candidates. Blair said he lives in Scripps Ranch where anti-Bernhardt sentiment is high.

Bernhardt said she’s not decided whether to support Blair or Carter. She says their refusal to help her will not influence her decision.

Bernhardt, Blair and Carter all stress there was no specific hint of quid pro quo on Bernhardt’s part. But Carter adds:

“I think all of politics is a quid pro quo.”

What’s in a Word

Words, words, words.

* Laying down on the job?

Press release: “Mercy Hospital to Host Prostrate Screening.”

* Title of Kennita Watson’s speech Tuesday to the San Diego Libertarian Supper Club: “Better Me Than Eu.”

It helps if you know Watson is running for secretary of state against March Fong Eu.