All comments are edited for length and content. Due to content or space limitations some comments may not be published. Please limit your calls to two minutes or less. Repeat messages on the same subject adding to the length will not be published.

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A woman, though she “doesn’t always agree with him,” commented on a letter to the editor by Gordon Skeels. “I agree wholeheartedly with him this time,” she said. “Madera, like a lot of towns, caters to a particular group. Also, these towns I travel through are always complaining about a shortage of workers, but every time I see 50 or more people standing around that tells me everyone is not working.”

Before she ran out of time, the lady asked, “what happened to the train station that was supposed to be moved from Avenue 15 out to Country Club Drive?”

A man, whose message was hard to understand, asked, “what ever happened to those people that proposed the Vision 2025 for Madera? What is Madera going to look like 25 years from now?”

A lady said, “Bill Coate has written many stories about Madera’s old establishments, but I have yet to see anything in the paper on the Mission Bell Winery on Road 24 and Avenue 13. It is one of the oldest establishments in Madera. I’m sure some people can give some information on its history.”

A woman wondered, “why the Madera Police Department is allowing a woman in a blue Mitsubishi truck to be prostituting out of her truck at Rotary Park, which is a community park where children play. She is parked there every single day and has people going in and out of her truck.”

A man said, “in today’s paper, Wednesday (July 23), Don Williams said he should brush up on his Spanish. He’s wrong. We should converse only in English to these immigrants. It would help them learn and understand the language of our country.”

“He’s done it again,” began a man’s call. “Emo has once again, just like he does every month, taken us to a wonderful place with his Meanderings. Besides Bridgeport, he also mentioned going to Bodie. I clipped and saved that article he wrote on the Bodie a few years ago. Now I don’t know if the editor sends him or he chooses which place to write about, but I wish he would go to the neighboring ghost towns of Aurora and Masonic and write about them.”

Several calls were received concerning the roadwork being done on streets in the city. One man asked, “why did they stop there? E Street, from one end to the other, is nice and the city recently repaired and sealed a section. But the worst part of the whole street, between Eighth and Ninth, across the old and unused spur tracks is one of the roughest blocks in town. Ridiculous.”

Another caller asked “when is CalTrans going to do something about their part of Yosemite? And what about the railroad? Crossing the tracks, especially the right hand lane going east, is so rough you could blow a tire.”

A lady asked, “am I the only one that believes Obama could be the antichrist? His charisma, his unnatural ability to attract people to him.” The call abruptly stopped at that point.

Another caller pointed out that “McCain’s inability to distinguish Somalia from Sudan and his mistaken concept of Iraq and Pakistan sharing a border is proof that when it comes to foreign affairs he needs a lot of help. God help us if he gets elected and then runs for a second term at his age.”

A visitor to the Red Line online wrote a long response to a letter to the editor by Dorlene L. De Cesare, who detailed 11 suggestions for improving the City of Madera, which included moving the fairgrounds and race track, demolishing some old buildings, building a new post office or branch elsewhere, “use old buildings, like the PG&E one, for a Children’s Museum” or something similarly educational, “clean up the run down apartments and slum housing,” “fix the downtown roads,” “support citywide pre-school” and other ideas.

Another Internet guest replied to the 11 suggestions: “Moving the fairgrounds and race track out to Avenue 17 and (SR) 99 next to the airport and new casino would not make Madera any better or improve it if you look at the issue closely. With gas prices as high as they are it might make less people go to the fair and the races. Where they both are right now are a central location to most of Madera, at least I think so. Moving them seems like a waste of time and money.”

The person also wrote, “Also, homeless people urinating just about anywhere dowtown with no care about whether they are seen by anyone or not is a problem too.”

An online reader, self-identified as “D,” wrote, “The guy who says we pay rent to the housing authority is right. We can’t get nothing repaired anymore without being charged. A microwave they put in quit working a year ago. No one fixed it. We have electrical problems in (the) bathroom and a bedroom. We don’t get them fixed because they charge. So what are we suppose to do when something needs to be fixed?”

A visitor to the Red Line site, self-identified as “James Humphrey,” wrote July 22, “We’ve beat you four years straight and you’re crying about this. Plus we never scored in the beginning of the games, always the end, so stop crying about it.”

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Thank you for your calls. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24-hours a day by calling 674-4478, or by visiting www.maderatribuneredline.com.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

One thing for sure about the upcoming political conventions, people will hardly bother to watch them on television. Oh, they might watch the acceptance speeches of the presidential candidates, for about an hour each. They might watch the vice presidential candidates speak — for about 45 minutes each.

But what else will there be to watch. We already will know who won. John McCain has the Republican nomination sewed up, and Barack Obama has the Democratic nomination in the bag.

They are going around the country talking about how they are going to govern, activity that in the past has been reserved for the time period that follows the conventions and precedes the election.

Barack Obama is even visiting foreign countries, as if he already were president, traveling to avoid a showdown on some thorny domestic debate.

For his part, McCain is flying around the country looking for crowds to talk to, giving about the same speeches he gave when he was running in the primaries.

Obama plans to give his acceptance speech in Denver’s Mile High Stadium, since the convention hall can’t hold the adoring crowds. Maybe he should give it in Germany, where the people don’t seem to mind standing in the streets to listen to him.

But the business of the conventions will be an afterthought, as far as television is concerned. The platform committees, for example, are about as fascinating as watching grass grow next to a house where the paint is drying — at least as far as television is concerned.

Conventions used to be full of political intrigue before the primary age. People in smoke-filled rooms made weighty decisions. Now, smoking is banned. We know who won. Bring on “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

By John Rieping
MaderaTribuneRedLine.com

Comments to the Madera Tribune Red Line site will take a few days to be processed this week because I will be away and without Internet access. Please continue to feel free to post your thoughts here in the meanwhile. I would not mind at all having comments here to approve when I return.

The Red Line will continue to have weekday updates despite my absence.

Have a good week.

It seems the news media have all but anointed Obama, fawning over him in foreign lands as if he were president.

It is reported that about 200,000 Germans enthusiastically attended and received Obama’s speech in Berlin. After the speech an attendee was asked about Obama. He replied, “he is my new Messiah.” The last time the Germans were mesmerized by a great orator, it wasn’t the Messiah.

Why should we blindly accept that change will be good? People don’t think they have anything left to lose until they lose it. We complain about the economy, war, etc., but look around: we have a lot to lose, especially freedom. Wisdom would guide us to not gamble all on such an unknown, nor be swept up by false euphoria.

In God we can have every confidence, but of mortal men who would lead we must require proof of their goodness, honesty and wisdom before we deliver ourselves under their power. Beware of elitists who believe they know what’s best for you, and seek power to enforce this belief.

Mark S. Cane,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The Wall Street Journal reports that cell phone users pose another problem for society besides talking while driving, and that is texting while walking. We’ve all seen it: A person will be walking down the street and not looking where he or she is going because he or she will be pounding his or her cell phone with his or her thumbs.

It is hard to imagine that any text message could be so important as to risk colliding with someone or tripping over something. I know I would not attempt it. Whenever I send a text message, the process is so engrossing that I have to remain seated just to think about how to get it done.

“Let’s see,” I say to myself. “What do I do next?”

On my cell phone, it is necessary for one to select the recipient before one starts tapping out the message. That isn’t always easy. I keep several names and numbers in my phone’s address book, but about half of them have indicated that they either never read text messages or don’t know how to retrieve them from their phones. Others have indicated that they hardly ever have enough minutes left in their plan month to waste them on reading a message from me.

But let’s assume that I know someone who wants to get a text message from me, and that I am able to enter that person’s cell phone number into the appropriate field on my cell phone.
Next comes the composition of the message. I am not a person who sends messages just so say “How are you doing?” There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with asking that, but why go to the trouble of sending a text message? My text messages tend to be four or five paragraphs, and I think, maybe it would be better just to call on the phone.

If I tried to deal with all this while walking around, I’d be smacking into utility poles or bowling over other people left and right.

Better for me to just sit home and wait for somebody to call.

By proclamation from the president of the United States: We are in a state of emergency. We are under martial law. As of 12:01 a.m., all transactions in cash, U.S. dollars will cease. Greenbacks will be useless. When the banks open, you can redeem your cash for a deposit in your bank account for the amount of the cash less 30 percent.

Most cash transactions are not claimed anyway.

Foreign banks will do the same. Audits will be conducted to make sure the average closing of business and opening of business cash amounts are normal with no big differences. All daily transactions will have the deposit slip attached to the cash for that transaction. Persons can only make one cash deposit. No multiple deposits. All persons must have a valid drivers license (DMV photo ID) and a Social Security number.

You can also get your debit card at the same time. All transactions in the future will be electronic. If you cut grass for cash… no more. If you are collecting disability and working for cash… no more. If you are collecting benefits and working for cash… no more. If you are selling drugs for cash… no more. All casino chips can only be used in house. Indian casinos will have their own money (wampum). They are a Sovereign Nation, let them make their own money. Only good on the Indian land.

Violations under martial law is the military firing squad. Street walkers will have to carry a credit card machine. If you have an “E” license plate… you are not exempt. If your name is Kennedy or Clinton… you are not exempt. Shortly after (all this happens) we will be able to build a monorail system from Fresno to Yosemite and close all vehicle traffic into the park.

Even if the first part don’t fly, I think we need to build the monorail and forget the high-speed stuff. Start from the bus yard, right up 41. Stop at the Casino, Oakhurst and Fishcamp, through the park and back. Have a nice day

Bill Hoffrage,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

If you need any peaches, give me a call. Our peach tree has decided to give birth all of a sudden. The peaches are so heavy, a branch laden with them fell off the tree the other day. Maybe it wasn’t the weight of the peaches that broke the branch. Maybe it was just getting old and figured the heck with it. Maybe the cat crawled up there, and its weight coupled with that of the peaches was all the old branch could take.

We are peach fans in our house. I have been gobbling them the last few days until I feel like a cobbler. All you would have to do is put me in the oven and bake me.

It isn’t that these peaches are all that good. Yes, they’re okay, but Mrs. Doud thinks they’re a little tart. I like them because they are nice and firm. They don’t get juice all over everything. You can carve pieces off the stone, then peel the pieces and eat the morsels in one bite without getting sticky or dripping on the front of your shirt.

I like to wash a peach, put it in a bowl, then carve it up with one of those little knives you get at the hardware store and eat it at leisure while I watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” That kind of secret pleasure is what being an American in the digital and peach age is all about.

Mrs. Doud went out and picked all the peaches from the tree the other day and brought sacks of them into the house. I asked whether we were going to can them, and she made a face. No canning this year.

But if you find a sack of peaches on your porch, left there in the middle of the night, you’ll know where they came from.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

One of the things we forget pretty easily is how lucky we are that most wild animals stay in the woods, and that we are better off not having them around us, at least where we live. They aren’t cuddly.

We’ve had three reminders in the past two days.

First, a Kern County woman out walking her dogs was attacked by a bear Tuesday near the town of Caliente, about 30 miles southeast of Bakersfield, just off Highway 14 on the Bakersfield side of the Tehachapi Pass. She was walking in brush among some hills — a place where you might not think a bear would be. She and her dogs managed to fight the bear off, and she drove herself to the hospital, and now, after surgery, she is recovering.

On Thursday, there were two incidents. The most serious, near the Kenai Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing, Alaska, involved a lodge employee being attacked by a grizzly, which grabbed her head in its mouth and tried to drag her away. Another lodge worker chased the bear away, and the victim of the attack was rushed to a hospital, where she was in critical condition. In the other Thursday incident, a bear stepped on a sleeping camper in a campground near Lake Tahoe. He was unhurt — just scared.

Wild animals at one time posed great danger to people, especially those who lived in the country. Bears, wolves, mountain lions and other big cats killed many humans when the west was being settled.

Conservationists who track bear, wolves and big cats in programs to observe and protect those animals very seldom go into the critters’ habitats without carrying guns.
That may be something we should think about before heading into the wild. It can be a dangerous place.

As I have a birthday today, I always remember this close friend of mine, the late Mel Parker. His and my birthday are on the same day.

I knew Mel from 1947 until he passed away in 2000.

One day in 1947, Sept. 14, Mel was mowing the lawn at the JV baseball diamond, and I asked him if my brother Oscar and I could practice baseball there, and he told us yes, as long as we didn’t move his crawling sprinklers.
On July 25, 1950, we bought a house on Santa Cruz Street, right behind Madison School, and Mr. Joe L. Flores was our next door neighbor and he gave me a job at night as a custodian. And once again I met Mel.

Joe Flores and I also became real good friends with him and his wife Katie and two daughters, Marcella who is a doctor in Portland and Joetta who is a teacher at Alpha. While living on Santa Cruz Street, I would see Mel working Saturday and Sunday at the ball diamond, and I would always stop by and help him move his crawling sprinklers and hoses. In 1975 the varsity baseball field was named in his honor, Mel Parker Field. I was so happy because I knew all the good work he had done since 1947-1975, as I was the manager of the Madera Merchants Baseball team from 1950 through 2001.

We used to play at Mel Parker Field. In 1989, we had lots of teams playing there. We had Madera High varsity baseball, American Legion, Babe Ruth League, American Legion playoffs and Babe Ruth playoffs. So I got permission in Fresno to use Fink White Park right off 99 and Fresno Street. I got permission from John Nellun who was the director of parks and recreation, who also was a baseball CIF umpire for high school games, and he told me yes because he knew how Mel and I kept up Mel Parker Field.

So March 1, 1989, before our California-Mexican American League got started, I took Mel on a Saturday morning and worked on the field all day. He worked on the pitcher’s mound and the batter’s box while I drug the field with my pickup. Coming back to Madera and driving in 99 he told me “Eddie one of this days you are going to have a baseball field named after you for all the good work you do for all these young players.” So, last year he was right — they named the varsity baseball field at the South High School Eddie Chapa Field. And this year my wife and I had our first grandson Jonathan playing at grandpa’s field.

They named quite a few things after people — like Mel Parker Field, Joe L. Flores Gym, Larry Zimmerman softball field, BJ Robinson Gym at Thomas Jefferson, Bill McCallister Pool, Lee Da Silva Field, Sonny Nishimoto School, and I feel great being among all these people that I knew while working there.

Eddie Chapa,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The remarkable productivity of Madera County’s farmers was underscored this week by the release of the crop report for 2007, which broke $1 billion in crop value for the third year in a row. Production totaled $1.2 billion, an 18 percent increase over the previous year.

The big three, milk, almonds and grapes, accounted for more than half the total. The rest of the top 10 commodities are all high-value crops, which like the top three require capital, management skill and hard work to make their production successful.

Gone are the days when a cow milker who had saved a little money could acquire 20 cows, start his own dairy and make a living with it, as it was possible to do three generations ago. Now, a dairy producer must tie up millions of dollars and be a skilled business person, a veterinarian pro tem, a food scientist, a personnel expert, an environmentalist and — yes — a cow milker and a calf feeder.

Nut and grape growers need to be experts not only in producing their crops, but must be involved in marketing them, in securing water, and in advocating for public policies that don’t make it any harder to farm than it already is.

All farmers need to be mechanics, plumbers, electricians, welders and politicians. They need to be truck and tractor drivers. They need to be carpenters and metal workers.

Most farmers leave the house clean and come home dirty, which means they have to work harder at home than their counterparts in town who don’t have so much laundry. Farmers also are in the law-enforcement business. They have to watch out for thieves, for drug users and manufacturers, and for vandals.

Right now, we see farmers and those who work for them coming home tired. No wonder. They are the heroes of hard work.