Jack Stone interview
Item
Title
eng
Jack Stone interview
Description
eng
Farmer and board chair of the Westlands Water District in the early 1980s when they were fighting National Land for People over the 160-acre limitation.
Creator
eng
Stone, Jack
eng
Gray, Glenn
Relation
eng
Water Archive Oral Histories
Coverage
eng
Jack Stone residence
Date
eng
6/30/2009
Format
eng
Microsoft Word 2003 document, 12 pages
Identifier
eng
SCMS_waoh_00017
extracted text
>> Glenn Gray: Well today is June 30, 2009 and we're at the home of Jack Stone
in Lemoore, and I'm Glenn Gray and I'm with the Madden Library at Fresno State
and I guess I'd like to start off by thanking you for this opportunity to
interview you; and could you start off by telling us when and where you were
born?
>> Jack Stone: Well, I was born in Corcoran in 1917 and we lived in Corcoran a
few years and in 1927 I think, we moved to Hanford and we have lived there ever
since. But after the war when I came back I rented a house in Stratford and
lived there for a few years.
>> Glenn Gray: Well why don't you tell me a little bit about your, your family
background, your parents?
>> Jack Stone: My mother's father was the fire chief of Sacramento in 1888 I
think it was, to 1910. That's the horse days, and there was a lot of interesting
stuff we saw with horses and so on. That was in Sacramento but we lived down
here so we only visited them once in a while.
>> Glenn Gray: And then what about your other, your other grandparents?
>> Jack Stone: And my other grandparents, my father was a judge and I don't know
much about him other than he was a judge, a successful one, a happy one, lived
in Michigan, Jackson, Michigan where my father was born, and when he was in
Roseville here in Sacramento we used to visit him a lot, but other than that, I
didn't see much of him.
>> Glenn Gray: And what brought your father to the valley then?
>> Jack Stone: My father was an engineer--a civil engineer and he started out
his work in Sacramento building the northern Sacramento railroad making trestles
and things like that. And I have some pictures here that show some of that; and
that was where he started out, and then he got a job in Corcoran building the
sewage system, and after the sewage system he got a job with the Kings County
Development Company building levies and canals around Tulare Lake for farming
purposes.
>> Glenn Gray: So you grew up with him doing this obviously so, so you were
aware then of, of how critical the water issues were in the area.
>> Jack Stone: Yes. Water was our big thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go out with your dad and watch these projects?
>> Jack Stone: Yes I certainly did.
>> Glenn Gray: Could you describe some of your--some childhood memories or your
growing up experiences what it was like?
>> Jack Stone: Well when we were in the Tulare Lake area we had a dredger there
to build levies with and it was fun to be on the dredger and watch move these
big chunks of mud and make levies. And then after having made the levies, they
would farm in the lands that were then dry and the object was to keep the levy
from washing away or breaking and losing your crop. So it was a battle to get
the crop out of there before the water got in the way. Of course there were a
lot of times there wasn't any water at all; and you just farmed out there on the
dry land of the old bed of Tulare Lake.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: And I spent a lot of time out there of course where I got my
first jobs and all that stuff. But the other part that I think is interesting is
when I used to travel around with my dad when he was building those three farms;
and that was a drive from Corcoran to Five Points across sage brush land in
search of the darn corners. To sell some of the land you had to find the land to
sell. And that was interesting to me and then of course I finally bought some
land myself but I don't know when we want to get in to that.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, tell me a little bit about--you mentioned some of your
first, first jobs so what were they?
>> Jack Stone: Well my first job was making records of truckloads of grain that
came off the field--just was an easygoing job. Just write down a number of facts
on the truck, that sort of thing. And then I also worked on the harvester
running the header tender wheel up on the top that put the header up and down
and that was interesting. That would get me up at 4:00 in the morning in Hanford
and down to Corcoran and out on the grain harvester. And I often just drove a
tractor that would set up and go and while we're discing something. And of
course that--many different tractors, many different jobs and I think that would
explain that part of the ranch. The other part of the ranch was seen that those
three sample farms were properly taken care of. Of course I was just a kid then.
I'm watching my dad to see that they're growing properly. For example, raising a
crop of, of tobacco; that was quite a thing. No one around here knew anything
about tobacco. So we grew a crop of tobacco and there's a picture of it there-darn good tobacco, but no place to treat it here and no one wanted to buy it. It
was proving to the people that you could grow anything out there on that land
and that's of course why we finally built the Westlands Water District which is
really took up most of my younger working life, was trying to perfect the
Westlands Water District that they're now letting go to heck.
>> Glenn Gray: Now you--when I was talking to you before you had mentioned
Southern Pacific had owned a lot of this land. Did your dad own--he didn't own
actually any of the land?
>> Jack Stone: He was just an employee for the Kings County Development Company.
>> Glenn Gray: And at what point—-did you, were you always interested in farming
yourself then?
>> Jack Stone: Seems like I was. I was following this guy around and I was
always interested in farming and didn't want to do anything else but farm or fly
airplanes one or the other.
>> Glenn Gray: So you'll have to tell us about that. Did--at what point did you
develop this interest in aviation and how does that, how does that correspond
with your interest in farming?
>> Jack Stone: Well that doesn't have too much connection except that was in
1936 when I had my own--well I got my own pilot's license in 1940; and what that
did for me in later years, which when I got involved in politics and in selling
these lands and different things around the country, was to fly to meetings and
so on in an airplane, when some other poor guy had to go in his A-model Ford. I
had an airplane. And I used it very much and loved to fly those darn airplanes.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and when did you buy your first land and start farming?
>> Jack Stone: That was after--well I started farming, I didn't buy it. That was
in 1939 I did a little farming on lease land out in Five Points Area. As soon as
I got going there it all came the war and I thought well I can't handle this and
the wear so I joined the army and sold that ranch.
>> Glenn Gray: What were you growing?
>> Jack Stone: I was growing mainly flaxseed at that time it was kind of
important. That was before the cotton boom and flax is our biggest thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And tell me about your army experiences. What did you do?
>> Jack Stone: Well, first of course as I imagined I joined the Air Force to
find out quickly that I couldn't fly because I'm colorblind; and that stopped
that thank God or I wouldn't be here. So I did my next best thing that I like is
engineering. My father was a surveyor and engineer and I knew of this level all
the time and I got, applied for off the ship in the Corps of Engineers which I
got into three other 51st generals service unit.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did that experience take you? Where were you based?
>> Jack Stone: First off, it took me to officer's school and so on in Virginia
and then it took me to England and I stayed there a year; and then I went to
France and followed the Army clear across into the Bulge although I was
fortunately I was not up in the front being shot at pretty hard; so I felt good
about my position there.
>> Glenn Gray: Where were you in England?
>> Jack Stone: I was around London and Watton. You know where Watton is. There's
an airport there in Watton and we were improving the condition of that airport.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and what kind of products did you work on in France and was
it just following the allied forces as they, as they...?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we would rebuild any bridge that we wanted to rebuild; some
waterways we changed and we did a lot of things that took almost like carpenter
work.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And at what point did you come home?
>> Jack Stone: I came home in 1935.
>> Glenn Gray: ‘45?
>> Jack Stone: ‘45.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and when you got back here were you able to then buy land
and start farming right off then?
>> Jack Stone: Well not too quickly, but I went to Stratford. I doubt if you
know where Stratford is but it's way in the hell out in the country there and
there was some land there available to lease; and I leased it and then I bought
land from neighboring farmers that already had wells drilled and they would sell
me some water and that's the water I used to get going, and then finally I did
well enough to drill my own well and then in fact I finally drilled several. And
another big item that a lot of people forget--you're out there now and it looks
beautiful, nice flattest ground in the world. It wasn't flat then. It was
unlevel and of course you can't irrigate unlevel land, so we had to do a lot of
tractor work to level out the land and pull the mountains down and dump them in
the low places and keep level with it and what we call land plane, land plane it
with big long land planes that were about 50 feet long and level the land that
way. And that has been improved ever since. They were still leveling land better
all the time and of course nowadays we have instruments that really level the
land perfectly that we didn't have then.
>> Glenn Gray: How much land did you have at that time?
>> Jack Stone: Well I started out with 160 acres but I had to change that pretty
fast.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you have people working for you then to do this, do this
work?
>> Jack Stone: I had two guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Two guys? And they were also the guys who worked with you on your
wells?
>> Jack Stone: Oh no I hired the wells.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were you growing at that time?
>> Jack Stone: What was I drilling? I was drilling for water.
>> Glenn Gray: No what were you growing? What crops?
>> Jack Stone: Oh. The main crop was barley—-because, wheat and barley, but
barley because it takes less water than wheat or less water than most anything
so that's the crop that we did most of; and we built a big green elevator for it
and then later we got into cotton because, and that was a great help and we
raised other crops like lettuce seeds and certain products that would pay a
little more.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah. So what can you tell us about those experiences then from
say the 1950's time? What was that like compared to say today if you go back 50
years or so?
>> Jack Stone: One of the big things that I think of--one we kind of had it
pretty well level; now we've got a leveler and that makes a lot of difference
and we didn't use much, if any, fertilizer when we first began. And then came
along anhydrous ammonia and used fertilizer and that has been improved every
year since, better fertilizer and so on. Of course the deep water is not as
productive as surface water, so finally when we got surface water our crops did
a little better.
>> Glenn Gray: Any experience with flooding?
>> Jack Stone: No not out there. Well we had some flooding from heavy rains; we
had some losses but not what I call big losses. But other people connected with
my father's operation, there was farming in the bottom of the Tulare Lake they
had a lot of flooding and you can see pictures of some of that flooding there.
>> Glenn Gray: Any other experiences, memories from back then that...?
>> Jack Stone: I got married
>> Glenn Gray: Ah hah.
>> Jack Stone: that's one big item.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jack Stone: I got married while I was still in the army—
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: --on a 7-day leave and it was the greatest 7-day leave I ever
had; and had a nice wife and two boys and a wonderful life thereafter.
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Where’s?
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Oh, She went to school with me.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And your sons were born um, at this time in the '50's?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah they were born in the 50's. I should be able to bang out the
figures but I can't.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and they grew up working with you on the farm?
>> Jack Stone: Yes. The one boy that I still have he's running the whole big
ranch now.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's his name?
>> Jack Stone: Bill.
>> Glenn Gray: Bill. Um, so you started expanding your operation--I assumed you
hired more people when you were growing, were growing more crops, different
crops at this time?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah. Now we had one of our big opponents on all this operation
is the government. Well first of course they were building this big irrigation
district, Westland's water district, which I thought was out of this world; it
was a wonderful thing—-its about miles of pipeline out of the ground, water
coming up on every 160 acres and, but first they said you could only have a 100
acre farm. Well of course that's ridiculous. You can't farm with that. And we
finally made many, many trips to Washington--or me and many other people of
course, got that changed to 960 acres. There's been some other ways to get
around that. My son has one 960 acres; I have another 960 acres. You have to go
through all that monkey motion to get around the hazards that the government can
put forth.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that like back when they were starting the Westland's
Water District? I assume you were in on that from the very beginning?
>> Jack Stone: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: So who organized that? Did Price Giffen or Russell Giffen
spearhead that movement or what was behind that?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with the Congressman's name right now, but.
>> Glenn Gray: Are you thinking of Sisk?
>> Jack Stone: Sisk, yeah. Sisk was a big guy. Well that was just a dream out of
this world. And when that was going along, funny about that time I had probably
drilled about six wells and had a nice new water delivery points and what do we
need these wells for anymore? So we took the wells out, sold them for half price
and covered them over. And so we wouldn't need them anymore and didn't and it
worked wonderfully well. But now we had to buy them all back again, drill all
the wells again and now we're running practically 90% on wells right now.
>> Glenn Gray: Wow.
>> Jack Stone: Unbelievable.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: While that water goes into the ocean not being sold to anybody.
>> Glenn Gray: So for you would you say the biggest boom years for you then
would that be like the 60's through to about the 80's maybe when they started
delivering the...?
>> Jack Stone: When we had plenty of water and the cotton price was good.
>> Glenn Gray: Was cotton the primary crop for you?
>> Jack Stone: At that time it was.
>> Glenn Gray: And what about today?
>> Jack Stone: Well today, the top crop is tomatoes.
>> Glenn Gray: Ah. And tell us a little bit about how things changed once
Westlands started to be irrigated and you got the San Luis Unit installed and
delivering water out your way. How did that transform your operations?
>> Jack Stone: Well it improved the operations just 100%. You had water in all
parts of the land and had pipelines where you could move water from this
section, two or three sections down the line with these underground pipelines;
and those underground pipelines we put in ourselves. We still had the water to
do it with.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And how involved were you with people like Congressman
Sisk and Russell Giffen in getting that whole thing started? Do you remember any
specific events or circumstances you and maybe Jack Woolf and some of these
other people?
>> Jack Stone: Well we went to a million meetings, Jack Woolf and I. Russell
Giffen was the president of Westlands Water District at that time, and then he
quit very shortly thereafter and then I took over. And then things worked well.
It just, just was a wonderful idea and we had the water and coming down the
river every year and there it is and there's that land out there that is that
productive; and now with these new chemicals that we have for fertilizing and
the new equipment we have to work with, boy what a difference. It used to be
when we were harvesting grain down in Tulare Lake we'd have these great big
wooden harvesters, seven men on each one, and now we have one harvester that
does as much as those seven great big harvesters did that we rented from people
that you had them going for their job.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh, uh huh. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that
transformed not only your own particular livelihood, but just how it transformed
the area, the region, and just the economy of locally here?
>> Jack Stone: Well, farming down there and every place that's where I think
things start. You grow a little seed that’s that big and you grow it to a great
big corn plant you've done something. Nowadays when you can't get enough water
to start a cornstalk, well the economy is hampered before it can even get going.
And not only that you might get going and run out of water and you have a loss.
So water is the thing.
>> Glenn Gray: I want to get back to this thing about the Westland Water
District. You were President. How many years were you President?
>> Jack Stone: I think it was 21.
>> Glenn Gray: 21 years. And who came up with the idea? Who really put this
together and said let's create this, this reservoir and lets->> Jack Stone: I guess it was Russell Giffen. He was the President at first.
>> Glenn Gray: First one yeah and so he managed to work this out with Sisk's
influence in Congress and so forth?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know if Congress had much to do with that. That's local
stuff, we all figured that out here. It all worked smoothly.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go back to Washington very often then?
>> Jack Stone: Many, many, many times.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that experience like for you?
>> Jack Stone: Oh it was a great experience--great experience and I was pleased
to be able to do something that would be helpful and go to all those meetings
and try to make things work better. At first we couldn't grow cotton out here.
We didn't have a cotton allotment. So I took a lot of trips to Washington to
change that so that we all, we can grow as much cotton as we want now, but for a
while we had the cotton allotment; and some of the land that I bought, I bought
it just so I could buy the cotton allotment that that ranch had.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and, and starting in about the 70's you start to see a
reaction. People are saying all these farmers--they're getting all this water,
they have these big farms, they're growing all this stuff and these people
didn't agree with that. So you had the National Land for People on the scene and
they filed, they filed a suit with people such as yourself and Westlands. Do you
want to talk at all about that experience?
>> Jack Stone: Well it was an experience that they thought we were being, uh
given something for nothing and we weren’t keeping great heaping stacks of
money, and we wanted that farm to keep going and so did most of the people that
were voters wanted this, these farms to continue. And when there were tough
times and thinking of losing money and laying off people and lowering wages,
farm subsidies helped. Farm subsidies were a hard subject for me to protect but
I did my best.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe a little bit about how the process works because
as I understand it you actually have to give some back. It's not that you're
just getting all this stuff for free. You know it's more involved than that.
>> Jack Stone: Well I don't know about giving anything back except paying taxes
and we paid a heck of a lot of taxes.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's your response to people like the National Land for
People and other newer environmental groups, people, who say these kinds of
things. You know, in effect you had--when the reclamation reform went through
back in the early 80's, how did that, how did that change the way you did things
or the perception of the way things were done out here?
>> Jack Stone: Well it never changed our additional effort. Our additional
effort was to do it right, make, make some money and pay our men right, and that
was one of the reasons why we had to go to great effort to combine some of these
960 acre farms so we could have a farm big enough to support insurance for each
man and proper payments and all the things that make life better.
>> Glenn Gray: And what would you--how would characterize some of the more
recent developments, say in the last 20 years or so? What's your take on the way
things have gone with the water and its availability to you and the way you
operate?
>> Jack Stone: Well I think you drive out to the Westlands Water District now
don't look at the dry fields that we had to give up, but look at the general
industry. There's no farming area in earth any better than that; but we had a
tough time because when we started it out, we had people against it. We had
George Miller, for example, did everything he could possibly do to stop that
operation from being successful. We knew that you need, if you're going to farm
like that, you have to drain the salts that acquire when you irrigate, so we
built 86 miles I think it was, a drain to drain that poor water into the ocean.
Well that first thing that they did was stop that, just turned it off. You
couldn't put any water in that drain and of course they blamed it on--it was
unhealthy for birds but it sure didn't hurt the birds any, especially when there
was a flood. We still couldn't dump any water in there, any of our salt water in
the flood waters that are going into the ocean.
>> Glenn Gray: Now what was--as I understand it when Congress approved to have
the reservoir etcetera, wasn't there a provision that there was supposed to be a
drainage solution that Congress was supposed to support? Why was that not
carried through? Was it because Miller...?
>> Jack Stone: Because Miller and people like that stopped it. In fact, the law
says that the Westlands, no the government will build a drain for the Westlands
Water District. And we sued them and won the suit and they still haven't allowed
us to do it. And that's still hanging fire.
>> Glenn Gray: I'm just wondering how can that be? How can you win the suit but
still nothing gets done?
>> Jack Stone: Try it on the government.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing) It's just seems so incredible.
>> Jack Stone: It's incredible. Why won't they let us drain that?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah I guess it kind of shows how much influence one person such
as Miller can have on an area that's not even part of his district.
>> Jack Stone: He said he'll never allow any of that terrible water to flow
across my land in a little ditch 10 feet wide.
>> Glenn Gray: Well you mentioned the birds and I guess that was the Kesterson
situation, what do you remember about that?
>> Jack Stone: I remember there was one bird that was damaged and he took a
picture of that bird and that's all you saw was a picture of that one bird that
was damaged. They blew that up so that made it look bad to people that likes
birds, that like birds.
>> Glenn Gray: What about--do you recall a situation with the--at about the same
time there was something that went on with the San Luis Unit where there was
some damage that was done or a part of it collapsed or something. Do you
remember anything about that? That's been about 20 or 30 years now?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know, I don’t know what you're talking about except there
was an area where they built the canal and those lands were such that they
subsided.
>> Glenn Gray: Subsided, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: Then of course that didn't work so they had to move it over and
work hard on it to make the canal stay put.
>> Glenn Gray: Now in your area specifically did you have issues with subsidence
then?
>> Jack Stone: No.
>> Glenn Gray: Interesting. Well what would you say--looking back now you've
been farming in this same spot now for over 50 years, um how would you compare
things today to back then? How far have you come and how far do you see that you
have to go?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know how to measure that but I guess I could maybe in
money per acre but to look at the crops that we're raising now, it just looks
gorgeous--green and blue and high and pretty. And when we didn't have these new
fertilizers and care that we have now that we have learned over the period of
land it sure didn't look like that years and years ago.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Well what would you say is the single most important
event or breakthrough that's occurred over the course of your career since you
got into it? If you could isolate any one thing?
>> Jack Stone: Boy that's a hard one to answer. The biggest thing that happened
was the building of the great Westlands Water District. There's thousands of
miles of underground pipe, there's no district like it in the world and 80
second feet of water will come out of the corner of every 160 acres, and it's
good water. First, it's better water than the water we were pumping out of the
ground, and that was just a tremendous change.
>> Glenn Gray: If that hadn't been built, would you still be in business?
>> Jack Stone: I think we'd still be in business but we'd be hampered along.
Right now, we're right back where we started from. We're back building new wells
now.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah because of the water deliveries not being there.
>> Jack Stone: Yeah.
>> Glenn
has made
could go
anything
Gray: But obviously the presence of the reservoir and the irrigation
a big difference for a lot of people in the intervening years. If you
back is there anything that you would have done differently? Is there
that you would have changed if you would have had the power to do so?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd shoot George Miller.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing)
>> Jack Stone: That's the first thing I'd do, and I'd try to--I don't see how we
can't get the people to understand how practical it is rather than to dump this
water into the ocean and not even sell it at all to put it in the system and
sell it for $100 an acre foot for the government; and we built the canal. We
make a payment every year on the cost of having built the canal, so it didn't
cost them eventually anything but it just seems the right thing to do and it was
successful, showed success. I don't know what I could do. The only thing I could
do is compare it to some other districts. We belong to the Lemoore Canal and
Irrigation District over in this area, and the farmers got together and built a
dam. And they get their water whenever it's here; they're suffering on a kind of
a drought. A drought is one thing--I don't mind the drought you can't do
anything about it; but they’re getting they’re water without any restrictions at
all and we have to get along with these people in Washington.
>> Glenn Gray: So apart from maybe building another dam somewhere, do you think
that something like a peripheral canal or what kind of, what are your feelings
or your thoughts on that?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd be all for a peripheral canal. I think that was a good
idea and I was shocked when it went down and I'm shocked that they're not
rebuilding it.
>> Glenn Gray: Well there's talk of it.
>> Jack Stone: There's talk of it.
>> Glenn Gray: Where are they going to...?
>> Jack Stone: And even if they decide to do it, it will take them 10, 20 years
to do it, so I can't see much hope for that.
>> Glenn Gray: Glen: Well, again looking back what are the most important
lessons that you'd say you'd learned from your career that you think it would be
good for people to know going forward? Is there anything that really stands out?
>> Jack Stone: Make sure that whatever you do you don't have the government
involved that depends on votes. Right now the liberals are in power, and they
don't know anything about farming at all, they never saw one and they don't know
if there is one. So I'd stay away from anything that had any dependence on votes
from people.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Are there any particular--you mentioned Congressman Sisk
and you mentioned Russell Giffen, are there any other individuals that you've
worked with or encountered over the course of your career that really stand out
as exemplars, exemplary people that you look back to and see they really made a
big difference good or bad; you mentioned George Miller on the bad side, but any
others?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with them right now. When you get this age, you
don't remember names like you should but there are some good guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, as you look ahead then because you've got—you can look, you
have the perspective, you can look back and you've seen all this stuff happen,
when you look ahead now what do you see--how do you see things?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we're doing the best we can possibly do to farm with less
water and we're using drip systems and sprinkler systems that are very expensive
but they do save some water, and that’s, that’s and we're still drilling wells.
Now I am amazed of how this great valley out here that has captured this water
throughout the year, and then we pump it out, how come it can still supply us
with water; and Lemoore for example, nice city right here on the edge of this
area, I'm wondering with a few years like this their pumps will stop putting out
water too. And when that happens and at the same time have them dump all this
water in the ocean and also having these big pumps that are ready to pump it
down here with a switch turned off. How dumb can he be? It's just unbelievable
and California is in debt now and millions of gallons, no, dollars worth of
water is being dumped into the earth, into the ocean right now that could help
on this debt; and they don’t, they're not doing it.
>> Glenn Gray: So, as we sort of --we've kind of come full circle here so did
you have any final words of wisdom for those of us today or in the near future
who are going to be carrying on here? What do you want to leave us with here
your sort of final thoughts on these matters?
>> Jack Stone: Jack: The first thing is to vote conservative and Republican and
do the best we can to prove to the people that common sense is important, and
figure things out not just bluntly stop something that's doing a good job.
>> Glenn Gray: Are there any particular politicians today that you look to as
being sort of the standard bearers for the future that you would point to?
>> Jack Stone: I should be pointing to Devon Nunes, who seems to be the most
outstanding one and he's a good fellow and they're listening to him a little
bit, but he's so overpowered with, and there's so many more liberals than there
are regulars that he can't do much.
==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====
in Lemoore, and I'm Glenn Gray and I'm with the Madden Library at Fresno State
and I guess I'd like to start off by thanking you for this opportunity to
interview you; and could you start off by telling us when and where you were
born?
>> Jack Stone: Well, I was born in Corcoran in 1917 and we lived in Corcoran a
few years and in 1927 I think, we moved to Hanford and we have lived there ever
since. But after the war when I came back I rented a house in Stratford and
lived there for a few years.
>> Glenn Gray: Well why don't you tell me a little bit about your, your family
background, your parents?
>> Jack Stone: My mother's father was the fire chief of Sacramento in 1888 I
think it was, to 1910. That's the horse days, and there was a lot of interesting
stuff we saw with horses and so on. That was in Sacramento but we lived down
here so we only visited them once in a while.
>> Glenn Gray: And then what about your other, your other grandparents?
>> Jack Stone: And my other grandparents, my father was a judge and I don't know
much about him other than he was a judge, a successful one, a happy one, lived
in Michigan, Jackson, Michigan where my father was born, and when he was in
Roseville here in Sacramento we used to visit him a lot, but other than that, I
didn't see much of him.
>> Glenn Gray: And what brought your father to the valley then?
>> Jack Stone: My father was an engineer--a civil engineer and he started out
his work in Sacramento building the northern Sacramento railroad making trestles
and things like that. And I have some pictures here that show some of that; and
that was where he started out, and then he got a job in Corcoran building the
sewage system, and after the sewage system he got a job with the Kings County
Development Company building levies and canals around Tulare Lake for farming
purposes.
>> Glenn Gray: So you grew up with him doing this obviously so, so you were
aware then of, of how critical the water issues were in the area.
>> Jack Stone: Yes. Water was our big thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go out with your dad and watch these projects?
>> Jack Stone: Yes I certainly did.
>> Glenn Gray: Could you describe some of your--some childhood memories or your
growing up experiences what it was like?
>> Jack Stone: Well when we were in the Tulare Lake area we had a dredger there
to build levies with and it was fun to be on the dredger and watch move these
big chunks of mud and make levies. And then after having made the levies, they
would farm in the lands that were then dry and the object was to keep the levy
from washing away or breaking and losing your crop. So it was a battle to get
the crop out of there before the water got in the way. Of course there were a
lot of times there wasn't any water at all; and you just farmed out there on the
dry land of the old bed of Tulare Lake.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: And I spent a lot of time out there of course where I got my
first jobs and all that stuff. But the other part that I think is interesting is
when I used to travel around with my dad when he was building those three farms;
and that was a drive from Corcoran to Five Points across sage brush land in
search of the darn corners. To sell some of the land you had to find the land to
sell. And that was interesting to me and then of course I finally bought some
land myself but I don't know when we want to get in to that.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, tell me a little bit about--you mentioned some of your
first, first jobs so what were they?
>> Jack Stone: Well my first job was making records of truckloads of grain that
came off the field--just was an easygoing job. Just write down a number of facts
on the truck, that sort of thing. And then I also worked on the harvester
running the header tender wheel up on the top that put the header up and down
and that was interesting. That would get me up at 4:00 in the morning in Hanford
and down to Corcoran and out on the grain harvester. And I often just drove a
tractor that would set up and go and while we're discing something. And of
course that--many different tractors, many different jobs and I think that would
explain that part of the ranch. The other part of the ranch was seen that those
three sample farms were properly taken care of. Of course I was just a kid then.
I'm watching my dad to see that they're growing properly. For example, raising a
crop of, of tobacco; that was quite a thing. No one around here knew anything
about tobacco. So we grew a crop of tobacco and there's a picture of it there-darn good tobacco, but no place to treat it here and no one wanted to buy it. It
was proving to the people that you could grow anything out there on that land
and that's of course why we finally built the Westlands Water District which is
really took up most of my younger working life, was trying to perfect the
Westlands Water District that they're now letting go to heck.
>> Glenn Gray: Now you--when I was talking to you before you had mentioned
Southern Pacific had owned a lot of this land. Did your dad own--he didn't own
actually any of the land?
>> Jack Stone: He was just an employee for the Kings County Development Company.
>> Glenn Gray: And at what point—-did you, were you always interested in farming
yourself then?
>> Jack Stone: Seems like I was. I was following this guy around and I was
always interested in farming and didn't want to do anything else but farm or fly
airplanes one or the other.
>> Glenn Gray: So you'll have to tell us about that. Did--at what point did you
develop this interest in aviation and how does that, how does that correspond
with your interest in farming?
>> Jack Stone: Well that doesn't have too much connection except that was in
1936 when I had my own--well I got my own pilot's license in 1940; and what that
did for me in later years, which when I got involved in politics and in selling
these lands and different things around the country, was to fly to meetings and
so on in an airplane, when some other poor guy had to go in his A-model Ford. I
had an airplane. And I used it very much and loved to fly those darn airplanes.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and when did you buy your first land and start farming?
>> Jack Stone: That was after--well I started farming, I didn't buy it. That was
in 1939 I did a little farming on lease land out in Five Points Area. As soon as
I got going there it all came the war and I thought well I can't handle this and
the wear so I joined the army and sold that ranch.
>> Glenn Gray: What were you growing?
>> Jack Stone: I was growing mainly flaxseed at that time it was kind of
important. That was before the cotton boom and flax is our biggest thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And tell me about your army experiences. What did you do?
>> Jack Stone: Well, first of course as I imagined I joined the Air Force to
find out quickly that I couldn't fly because I'm colorblind; and that stopped
that thank God or I wouldn't be here. So I did my next best thing that I like is
engineering. My father was a surveyor and engineer and I knew of this level all
the time and I got, applied for off the ship in the Corps of Engineers which I
got into three other 51st generals service unit.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did that experience take you? Where were you based?
>> Jack Stone: First off, it took me to officer's school and so on in Virginia
and then it took me to England and I stayed there a year; and then I went to
France and followed the Army clear across into the Bulge although I was
fortunately I was not up in the front being shot at pretty hard; so I felt good
about my position there.
>> Glenn Gray: Where were you in England?
>> Jack Stone: I was around London and Watton. You know where Watton is. There's
an airport there in Watton and we were improving the condition of that airport.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and what kind of products did you work on in France and was
it just following the allied forces as they, as they...?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we would rebuild any bridge that we wanted to rebuild; some
waterways we changed and we did a lot of things that took almost like carpenter
work.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And at what point did you come home?
>> Jack Stone: I came home in 1935.
>> Glenn Gray: ‘45?
>> Jack Stone: ‘45.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and when you got back here were you able to then buy land
and start farming right off then?
>> Jack Stone: Well not too quickly, but I went to Stratford. I doubt if you
know where Stratford is but it's way in the hell out in the country there and
there was some land there available to lease; and I leased it and then I bought
land from neighboring farmers that already had wells drilled and they would sell
me some water and that's the water I used to get going, and then finally I did
well enough to drill my own well and then in fact I finally drilled several. And
another big item that a lot of people forget--you're out there now and it looks
beautiful, nice flattest ground in the world. It wasn't flat then. It was
unlevel and of course you can't irrigate unlevel land, so we had to do a lot of
tractor work to level out the land and pull the mountains down and dump them in
the low places and keep level with it and what we call land plane, land plane it
with big long land planes that were about 50 feet long and level the land that
way. And that has been improved ever since. They were still leveling land better
all the time and of course nowadays we have instruments that really level the
land perfectly that we didn't have then.
>> Glenn Gray: How much land did you have at that time?
>> Jack Stone: Well I started out with 160 acres but I had to change that pretty
fast.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you have people working for you then to do this, do this
work?
>> Jack Stone: I had two guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Two guys? And they were also the guys who worked with you on your
wells?
>> Jack Stone: Oh no I hired the wells.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were you growing at that time?
>> Jack Stone: What was I drilling? I was drilling for water.
>> Glenn Gray: No what were you growing? What crops?
>> Jack Stone: Oh. The main crop was barley—-because, wheat and barley, but
barley because it takes less water than wheat or less water than most anything
so that's the crop that we did most of; and we built a big green elevator for it
and then later we got into cotton because, and that was a great help and we
raised other crops like lettuce seeds and certain products that would pay a
little more.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah. So what can you tell us about those experiences then from
say the 1950's time? What was that like compared to say today if you go back 50
years or so?
>> Jack Stone: One of the big things that I think of--one we kind of had it
pretty well level; now we've got a leveler and that makes a lot of difference
and we didn't use much, if any, fertilizer when we first began. And then came
along anhydrous ammonia and used fertilizer and that has been improved every
year since, better fertilizer and so on. Of course the deep water is not as
productive as surface water, so finally when we got surface water our crops did
a little better.
>> Glenn Gray: Any experience with flooding?
>> Jack Stone: No not out there. Well we had some flooding from heavy rains; we
had some losses but not what I call big losses. But other people connected with
my father's operation, there was farming in the bottom of the Tulare Lake they
had a lot of flooding and you can see pictures of some of that flooding there.
>> Glenn Gray: Any other experiences, memories from back then that...?
>> Jack Stone: I got married
>> Glenn Gray: Ah hah.
>> Jack Stone: that's one big item.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jack Stone: I got married while I was still in the army—
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: --on a 7-day leave and it was the greatest 7-day leave I ever
had; and had a nice wife and two boys and a wonderful life thereafter.
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Where’s?
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Oh, She went to school with me.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And your sons were born um, at this time in the '50's?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah they were born in the 50's. I should be able to bang out the
figures but I can't.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and they grew up working with you on the farm?
>> Jack Stone: Yes. The one boy that I still have he's running the whole big
ranch now.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's his name?
>> Jack Stone: Bill.
>> Glenn Gray: Bill. Um, so you started expanding your operation--I assumed you
hired more people when you were growing, were growing more crops, different
crops at this time?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah. Now we had one of our big opponents on all this operation
is the government. Well first of course they were building this big irrigation
district, Westland's water district, which I thought was out of this world; it
was a wonderful thing—-its about miles of pipeline out of the ground, water
coming up on every 160 acres and, but first they said you could only have a 100
acre farm. Well of course that's ridiculous. You can't farm with that. And we
finally made many, many trips to Washington--or me and many other people of
course, got that changed to 960 acres. There's been some other ways to get
around that. My son has one 960 acres; I have another 960 acres. You have to go
through all that monkey motion to get around the hazards that the government can
put forth.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that like back when they were starting the Westland's
Water District? I assume you were in on that from the very beginning?
>> Jack Stone: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: So who organized that? Did Price Giffen or Russell Giffen
spearhead that movement or what was behind that?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with the Congressman's name right now, but.
>> Glenn Gray: Are you thinking of Sisk?
>> Jack Stone: Sisk, yeah. Sisk was a big guy. Well that was just a dream out of
this world. And when that was going along, funny about that time I had probably
drilled about six wells and had a nice new water delivery points and what do we
need these wells for anymore? So we took the wells out, sold them for half price
and covered them over. And so we wouldn't need them anymore and didn't and it
worked wonderfully well. But now we had to buy them all back again, drill all
the wells again and now we're running practically 90% on wells right now.
>> Glenn Gray: Wow.
>> Jack Stone: Unbelievable.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: While that water goes into the ocean not being sold to anybody.
>> Glenn Gray: So for you would you say the biggest boom years for you then
would that be like the 60's through to about the 80's maybe when they started
delivering the...?
>> Jack Stone: When we had plenty of water and the cotton price was good.
>> Glenn Gray: Was cotton the primary crop for you?
>> Jack Stone: At that time it was.
>> Glenn Gray: And what about today?
>> Jack Stone: Well today, the top crop is tomatoes.
>> Glenn Gray: Ah. And tell us a little bit about how things changed once
Westlands started to be irrigated and you got the San Luis Unit installed and
delivering water out your way. How did that transform your operations?
>> Jack Stone: Well it improved the operations just 100%. You had water in all
parts of the land and had pipelines where you could move water from this
section, two or three sections down the line with these underground pipelines;
and those underground pipelines we put in ourselves. We still had the water to
do it with.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And how involved were you with people like Congressman
Sisk and Russell Giffen in getting that whole thing started? Do you remember any
specific events or circumstances you and maybe Jack Woolf and some of these
other people?
>> Jack Stone: Well we went to a million meetings, Jack Woolf and I. Russell
Giffen was the president of Westlands Water District at that time, and then he
quit very shortly thereafter and then I took over. And then things worked well.
It just, just was a wonderful idea and we had the water and coming down the
river every year and there it is and there's that land out there that is that
productive; and now with these new chemicals that we have for fertilizing and
the new equipment we have to work with, boy what a difference. It used to be
when we were harvesting grain down in Tulare Lake we'd have these great big
wooden harvesters, seven men on each one, and now we have one harvester that
does as much as those seven great big harvesters did that we rented from people
that you had them going for their job.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh, uh huh. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that
transformed not only your own particular livelihood, but just how it transformed
the area, the region, and just the economy of locally here?
>> Jack Stone: Well, farming down there and every place that's where I think
things start. You grow a little seed that’s that big and you grow it to a great
big corn plant you've done something. Nowadays when you can't get enough water
to start a cornstalk, well the economy is hampered before it can even get going.
And not only that you might get going and run out of water and you have a loss.
So water is the thing.
>> Glenn Gray: I want to get back to this thing about the Westland Water
District. You were President. How many years were you President?
>> Jack Stone: I think it was 21.
>> Glenn Gray: 21 years. And who came up with the idea? Who really put this
together and said let's create this, this reservoir and lets->> Jack Stone: I guess it was Russell Giffen. He was the President at first.
>> Glenn Gray: First one yeah and so he managed to work this out with Sisk's
influence in Congress and so forth?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know if Congress had much to do with that. That's local
stuff, we all figured that out here. It all worked smoothly.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go back to Washington very often then?
>> Jack Stone: Many, many, many times.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that experience like for you?
>> Jack Stone: Oh it was a great experience--great experience and I was pleased
to be able to do something that would be helpful and go to all those meetings
and try to make things work better. At first we couldn't grow cotton out here.
We didn't have a cotton allotment. So I took a lot of trips to Washington to
change that so that we all, we can grow as much cotton as we want now, but for a
while we had the cotton allotment; and some of the land that I bought, I bought
it just so I could buy the cotton allotment that that ranch had.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and, and starting in about the 70's you start to see a
reaction. People are saying all these farmers--they're getting all this water,
they have these big farms, they're growing all this stuff and these people
didn't agree with that. So you had the National Land for People on the scene and
they filed, they filed a suit with people such as yourself and Westlands. Do you
want to talk at all about that experience?
>> Jack Stone: Well it was an experience that they thought we were being, uh
given something for nothing and we weren’t keeping great heaping stacks of
money, and we wanted that farm to keep going and so did most of the people that
were voters wanted this, these farms to continue. And when there were tough
times and thinking of losing money and laying off people and lowering wages,
farm subsidies helped. Farm subsidies were a hard subject for me to protect but
I did my best.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe a little bit about how the process works because
as I understand it you actually have to give some back. It's not that you're
just getting all this stuff for free. You know it's more involved than that.
>> Jack Stone: Well I don't know about giving anything back except paying taxes
and we paid a heck of a lot of taxes.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's your response to people like the National Land for
People and other newer environmental groups, people, who say these kinds of
things. You know, in effect you had--when the reclamation reform went through
back in the early 80's, how did that, how did that change the way you did things
or the perception of the way things were done out here?
>> Jack Stone: Well it never changed our additional effort. Our additional
effort was to do it right, make, make some money and pay our men right, and that
was one of the reasons why we had to go to great effort to combine some of these
960 acre farms so we could have a farm big enough to support insurance for each
man and proper payments and all the things that make life better.
>> Glenn Gray: And what would you--how would characterize some of the more
recent developments, say in the last 20 years or so? What's your take on the way
things have gone with the water and its availability to you and the way you
operate?
>> Jack Stone: Well I think you drive out to the Westlands Water District now
don't look at the dry fields that we had to give up, but look at the general
industry. There's no farming area in earth any better than that; but we had a
tough time because when we started it out, we had people against it. We had
George Miller, for example, did everything he could possibly do to stop that
operation from being successful. We knew that you need, if you're going to farm
like that, you have to drain the salts that acquire when you irrigate, so we
built 86 miles I think it was, a drain to drain that poor water into the ocean.
Well that first thing that they did was stop that, just turned it off. You
couldn't put any water in that drain and of course they blamed it on--it was
unhealthy for birds but it sure didn't hurt the birds any, especially when there
was a flood. We still couldn't dump any water in there, any of our salt water in
the flood waters that are going into the ocean.
>> Glenn Gray: Now what was--as I understand it when Congress approved to have
the reservoir etcetera, wasn't there a provision that there was supposed to be a
drainage solution that Congress was supposed to support? Why was that not
carried through? Was it because Miller...?
>> Jack Stone: Because Miller and people like that stopped it. In fact, the law
says that the Westlands, no the government will build a drain for the Westlands
Water District. And we sued them and won the suit and they still haven't allowed
us to do it. And that's still hanging fire.
>> Glenn Gray: I'm just wondering how can that be? How can you win the suit but
still nothing gets done?
>> Jack Stone: Try it on the government.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing) It's just seems so incredible.
>> Jack Stone: It's incredible. Why won't they let us drain that?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah I guess it kind of shows how much influence one person such
as Miller can have on an area that's not even part of his district.
>> Jack Stone: He said he'll never allow any of that terrible water to flow
across my land in a little ditch 10 feet wide.
>> Glenn Gray: Well you mentioned the birds and I guess that was the Kesterson
situation, what do you remember about that?
>> Jack Stone: I remember there was one bird that was damaged and he took a
picture of that bird and that's all you saw was a picture of that one bird that
was damaged. They blew that up so that made it look bad to people that likes
birds, that like birds.
>> Glenn Gray: What about--do you recall a situation with the--at about the same
time there was something that went on with the San Luis Unit where there was
some damage that was done or a part of it collapsed or something. Do you
remember anything about that? That's been about 20 or 30 years now?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know, I don’t know what you're talking about except there
was an area where they built the canal and those lands were such that they
subsided.
>> Glenn Gray: Subsided, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: Then of course that didn't work so they had to move it over and
work hard on it to make the canal stay put.
>> Glenn Gray: Now in your area specifically did you have issues with subsidence
then?
>> Jack Stone: No.
>> Glenn Gray: Interesting. Well what would you say--looking back now you've
been farming in this same spot now for over 50 years, um how would you compare
things today to back then? How far have you come and how far do you see that you
have to go?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know how to measure that but I guess I could maybe in
money per acre but to look at the crops that we're raising now, it just looks
gorgeous--green and blue and high and pretty. And when we didn't have these new
fertilizers and care that we have now that we have learned over the period of
land it sure didn't look like that years and years ago.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Well what would you say is the single most important
event or breakthrough that's occurred over the course of your career since you
got into it? If you could isolate any one thing?
>> Jack Stone: Boy that's a hard one to answer. The biggest thing that happened
was the building of the great Westlands Water District. There's thousands of
miles of underground pipe, there's no district like it in the world and 80
second feet of water will come out of the corner of every 160 acres, and it's
good water. First, it's better water than the water we were pumping out of the
ground, and that was just a tremendous change.
>> Glenn Gray: If that hadn't been built, would you still be in business?
>> Jack Stone: I think we'd still be in business but we'd be hampered along.
Right now, we're right back where we started from. We're back building new wells
now.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah because of the water deliveries not being there.
>> Jack Stone: Yeah.
>> Glenn
has made
could go
anything
Gray: But obviously the presence of the reservoir and the irrigation
a big difference for a lot of people in the intervening years. If you
back is there anything that you would have done differently? Is there
that you would have changed if you would have had the power to do so?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd shoot George Miller.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing)
>> Jack Stone: That's the first thing I'd do, and I'd try to--I don't see how we
can't get the people to understand how practical it is rather than to dump this
water into the ocean and not even sell it at all to put it in the system and
sell it for $100 an acre foot for the government; and we built the canal. We
make a payment every year on the cost of having built the canal, so it didn't
cost them eventually anything but it just seems the right thing to do and it was
successful, showed success. I don't know what I could do. The only thing I could
do is compare it to some other districts. We belong to the Lemoore Canal and
Irrigation District over in this area, and the farmers got together and built a
dam. And they get their water whenever it's here; they're suffering on a kind of
a drought. A drought is one thing--I don't mind the drought you can't do
anything about it; but they’re getting they’re water without any restrictions at
all and we have to get along with these people in Washington.
>> Glenn Gray: So apart from maybe building another dam somewhere, do you think
that something like a peripheral canal or what kind of, what are your feelings
or your thoughts on that?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd be all for a peripheral canal. I think that was a good
idea and I was shocked when it went down and I'm shocked that they're not
rebuilding it.
>> Glenn Gray: Well there's talk of it.
>> Jack Stone: There's talk of it.
>> Glenn Gray: Where are they going to...?
>> Jack Stone: And even if they decide to do it, it will take them 10, 20 years
to do it, so I can't see much hope for that.
>> Glenn Gray: Glen: Well, again looking back what are the most important
lessons that you'd say you'd learned from your career that you think it would be
good for people to know going forward? Is there anything that really stands out?
>> Jack Stone: Make sure that whatever you do you don't have the government
involved that depends on votes. Right now the liberals are in power, and they
don't know anything about farming at all, they never saw one and they don't know
if there is one. So I'd stay away from anything that had any dependence on votes
from people.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Are there any particular--you mentioned Congressman Sisk
and you mentioned Russell Giffen, are there any other individuals that you've
worked with or encountered over the course of your career that really stand out
as exemplars, exemplary people that you look back to and see they really made a
big difference good or bad; you mentioned George Miller on the bad side, but any
others?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with them right now. When you get this age, you
don't remember names like you should but there are some good guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, as you look ahead then because you've got—you can look, you
have the perspective, you can look back and you've seen all this stuff happen,
when you look ahead now what do you see--how do you see things?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we're doing the best we can possibly do to farm with less
water and we're using drip systems and sprinkler systems that are very expensive
but they do save some water, and that’s, that’s and we're still drilling wells.
Now I am amazed of how this great valley out here that has captured this water
throughout the year, and then we pump it out, how come it can still supply us
with water; and Lemoore for example, nice city right here on the edge of this
area, I'm wondering with a few years like this their pumps will stop putting out
water too. And when that happens and at the same time have them dump all this
water in the ocean and also having these big pumps that are ready to pump it
down here with a switch turned off. How dumb can he be? It's just unbelievable
and California is in debt now and millions of gallons, no, dollars worth of
water is being dumped into the earth, into the ocean right now that could help
on this debt; and they don’t, they're not doing it.
>> Glenn Gray: So, as we sort of --we've kind of come full circle here so did
you have any final words of wisdom for those of us today or in the near future
who are going to be carrying on here? What do you want to leave us with here
your sort of final thoughts on these matters?
>> Jack Stone: Jack: The first thing is to vote conservative and Republican and
do the best we can to prove to the people that common sense is important, and
figure things out not just bluntly stop something that's doing a good job.
>> Glenn Gray: Are there any particular politicians today that you look to as
being sort of the standard bearers for the future that you would point to?
>> Jack Stone: I should be pointing to Devon Nunes, who seems to be the most
outstanding one and he's a good fellow and they're listening to him a little
bit, but he's so overpowered with, and there's so many more liberals than there
are regulars that he can't do much.
==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====
>> Glenn Gray: Well today is June 30, 2009 and we're at the home of Jack Stone
in Lemoore, and I'm Glenn Gray and I'm with the Madden Library at Fresno State
and I guess I'd like to start off by thanking you for this opportunity to
interview you; and could you start off by telling us when and where you were
born?
>> Jack Stone: Well, I was born in Corcoran in 1917 and we lived in Corcoran a
few years and in 1927 I think, we moved to Hanford and we have lived there ever
since. But after the war when I came back I rented a house in Stratford and
lived there for a few years.
>> Glenn Gray: Well why don't you tell me a little bit about your, your family
background, your parents?
>> Jack Stone: My mother's father was the fire chief of Sacramento in 1888 I
think it was, to 1910. That's the horse days, and there was a lot of interesting
stuff we saw with horses and so on. That was in Sacramento but we lived down
here so we only visited them once in a while.
>> Glenn Gray: And then what about your other, your other grandparents?
>> Jack Stone: And my other grandparents, my father was a judge and I don't know
much about him other than he was a judge, a successful one, a happy one, lived
in Michigan, Jackson, Michigan where my father was born, and when he was in
Roseville here in Sacramento we used to visit him a lot, but other than that, I
didn't see much of him.
>> Glenn Gray: And what brought your father to the valley then?
>> Jack Stone: My father was an engineer--a civil engineer and he started out
his work in Sacramento building the northern Sacramento railroad making trestles
and things like that. And I have some pictures here that show some of that; and
that was where he started out, and then he got a job in Corcoran building the
sewage system, and after the sewage system he got a job with the Kings County
Development Company building levies and canals around Tulare Lake for farming
purposes.
>> Glenn Gray: So you grew up with him doing this obviously so, so you were
aware then of, of how critical the water issues were in the area.
>> Jack Stone: Yes. Water was our big thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go out with your dad and watch these projects?
>> Jack Stone: Yes I certainly did.
>> Glenn Gray: Could you describe some of your--some childhood memories or your
growing up experiences what it was like?
>> Jack Stone: Well when we were in the Tulare Lake area we had a dredger there
to build levies with and it was fun to be on the dredger and watch move these
big chunks of mud and make levies. And then after having made the levies, they
would farm in the lands that were then dry and the object was to keep the levy
from washing away or breaking and losing your crop. So it was a battle to get
the crop out of there before the water got in the way. Of course there were a
lot of times there wasn't any water at all; and you just farmed out there on the
dry land of the old bed of Tulare Lake.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: And I spent a lot of time out there of course where I got my
first jobs and all that stuff. But the other part that I think is interesting is
when I used to travel around with my dad when he was building those three farms;
and that was a drive from Corcoran to Five Points across sage brush land in
search of the darn corners. To sell some of the land you had to find the land to
sell. And that was interesting to me and then of course I finally bought some
land myself but I don't know when we want to get in to that.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, tell me a little bit about--you mentioned some of your
first, first jobs so what were they?
>> Jack Stone: Well my first job was making records of truckloads of grain that
came off the field--just was an easygoing job. Just write down a number of facts
on the truck, that sort of thing. And then I also worked on the harvester
running the header tender wheel up on the top that put the header up and down
and that was interesting. That would get me up at 4:00 in the morning in Hanford
and down to Corcoran and out on the grain harvester. And I often just drove a
tractor that would set up and go and while we're discing something. And of
course that--many different tractors, many different jobs and I think that would
explain that part of the ranch. The other part of the ranch was seen that those
three sample farms were properly taken care of. Of course I was just a kid then.
I'm watching my dad to see that they're growing properly. For example, raising a
crop of, of tobacco; that was quite a thing. No one around here knew anything
about tobacco. So we grew a crop of tobacco and there's a picture of it there-darn good tobacco, but no place to treat it here and no one wanted to buy it. It
was proving to the people that you could grow anything out there on that land
and that's of course why we finally built the Westlands Water District which is
really took up most of my younger working life, was trying to perfect the
Westlands Water District that they're now letting go to heck.
>> Glenn Gray: Now you--when I was talking to you before you had mentioned
Southern Pacific had owned a lot of this land. Did your dad own--he didn't own
actually any of the land?
>> Jack Stone: He was just an employee for the Kings County Development Company.
>> Glenn Gray: And at what point—-did you, were you always interested in farming
yourself then?
>> Jack Stone: Seems like I was. I was following this guy around and I was
always interested in farming and didn't want to do anything else but farm or fly
airplanes one or the other.
>> Glenn Gray: So you'll have to tell us about that. Did--at what point did you
develop this interest in aviation and how does that, how does that correspond
with your interest in farming?
>> Jack Stone: Well that doesn't have too much connection except that was in
1936 when I had my own--well I got my own pilot's license in 1940; and what that
did for me in later years, which when I got involved in politics and in selling
these lands and different things around the country, was to fly to meetings and
so on in an airplane, when some other poor guy had to go in his A-model Ford. I
had an airplane. And I used it very much and loved to fly those darn airplanes.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and when did you buy your first land and start farming?
>> Jack Stone: That was after--well I started farming, I didn't buy it. That was
in 1939 I did a little farming on lease land out in Five Points Area. As soon as
I got going there it all came the war and I thought well I can't handle this and
the wear so I joined the army and sold that ranch.
>> Glenn Gray: What were you growing?
>> Jack Stone: I was growing mainly flaxseed at that time it was kind of
important. That was before the cotton boom and flax is our biggest thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And tell me about your army experiences. What did you do?
>> Jack Stone: Well, first of course as I imagined I joined the Air Force to
find out quickly that I couldn't fly because I'm colorblind; and that stopped
that thank God or I wouldn't be here. So I did my next best thing that I like is
engineering. My father was a surveyor and engineer and I knew of this level all
the time and I got, applied for off the ship in the Corps of Engineers which I
got into three other 51st generals service unit.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did that experience take you? Where were you based?
>> Jack Stone: First off, it took me to officer's school and so on in Virginia
and then it took me to England and I stayed there a year; and then I went to
France and followed the Army clear across into the Bulge although I was
fortunately I was not up in the front being shot at pretty hard; so I felt good
about my position there.
>> Glenn Gray: Where were you in England?
>> Jack Stone: I was around London and Watton. You know where Watton is. There's
an airport there in Watton and we were improving the condition of that airport.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and what kind of products did you work on in France and was
it just following the allied forces as they, as they...?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we would rebuild any bridge that we wanted to rebuild; some
waterways we changed and we did a lot of things that took almost like carpenter
work.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And at what point did you come home?
>> Jack Stone: I came home in 1935.
>> Glenn Gray: ‘45?
>> Jack Stone: ‘45.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and when you got back here were you able to then buy land
and start farming right off then?
>> Jack Stone: Well not too quickly, but I went to Stratford. I doubt if you
know where Stratford is but it's way in the hell out in the country there and
there was some land there available to lease; and I leased it and then I bought
land from neighboring farmers that already had wells drilled and they would sell
me some water and that's the water I used to get going, and then finally I did
well enough to drill my own well and then in fact I finally drilled several. And
another big item that a lot of people forget--you're out there now and it looks
beautiful, nice flattest ground in the world. It wasn't flat then. It was
unlevel and of course you can't irrigate unlevel land, so we had to do a lot of
tractor work to level out the land and pull the mountains down and dump them in
the low places and keep level with it and what we call land plane, land plane it
with big long land planes that were about 50 feet long and level the land that
way. And that has been improved ever since. They were still leveling land better
all the time and of course nowadays we have instruments that really level the
land perfectly that we didn't have then.
>> Glenn Gray: How much land did you have at that time?
>> Jack Stone: Well I started out with 160 acres but I had to change that pretty
fast.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you have people working for you then to do this, do this
work?
>> Jack Stone: I had two guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Two guys? And they were also the guys who worked with you on your
wells?
>> Jack Stone: Oh no I hired the wells.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were you growing at that time?
>> Jack Stone: What was I drilling? I was drilling for water.
>> Glenn Gray: No what were you growing? What crops?
>> Jack Stone: Oh. The main crop was barley—-because, wheat and barley, but
barley because it takes less water than wheat or less water than most anything
so that's the crop that we did most of; and we built a big green elevator for it
and then later we got into cotton because, and that was a great help and we
raised other crops like lettuce seeds and certain products that would pay a
little more.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah. So what can you tell us about those experiences then from
say the 1950's time? What was that like compared to say today if you go back 50
years or so?
>> Jack Stone: One of the big things that I think of--one we kind of had it
pretty well level; now we've got a leveler and that makes a lot of difference
and we didn't use much, if any, fertilizer when we first began. And then came
along anhydrous ammonia and used fertilizer and that has been improved every
year since, better fertilizer and so on. Of course the deep water is not as
productive as surface water, so finally when we got surface water our crops did
a little better.
>> Glenn Gray: Any experience with flooding?
>> Jack Stone: No not out there. Well we had some flooding from heavy rains; we
had some losses but not what I call big losses. But other people connected with
my father's operation, there was farming in the bottom of the Tulare Lake they
had a lot of flooding and you can see pictures of some of that flooding there.
>> Glenn Gray: Any other experiences, memories from back then that...?
>> Jack Stone: I got married
>> Glenn Gray: Ah hah.
>> Jack Stone: that's one big item.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jack Stone: I got married while I was still in the army—
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: --on a 7-day leave and it was the greatest 7-day leave I ever
had; and had a nice wife and two boys and a wonderful life thereafter.
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Where’s?
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Oh, She went to school with me.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And your sons were born um, at this time in the '50's?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah they were born in the 50's. I should be able to bang out the
figures but I can't.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and they grew up working with you on the farm?
>> Jack Stone: Yes. The one boy that I still have he's running the whole big
ranch now.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's his name?
>> Jack Stone: Bill.
>> Glenn Gray: Bill. Um, so you started expanding your operation--I assumed you
hired more people when you were growing, were growing more crops, different
crops at this time?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah. Now we had one of our big opponents on all this operation
is the government. Well first of course they were building this big irrigation
district, Westland's water district, which I thought was out of this world; it
was a wonderful thing—-its about miles of pipeline out of the ground, water
coming up on every 160 acres and, but first they said you could only have a 100
acre farm. Well of course that's ridiculous. You can't farm with that. And we
finally made many, many trips to Washington--or me and many other people of
course, got that changed to 960 acres. There's been some other ways to get
around that. My son has one 960 acres; I have another 960 acres. You have to go
through all that monkey motion to get around the hazards that the government can
put forth.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that like back when they were starting the Westland's
Water District? I assume you were in on that from the very beginning?
>> Jack Stone: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: So who organized that? Did Price Giffen or Russell Giffen
spearhead that movement or what was behind that?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with the Congressman's name right now, but.
>> Glenn Gray: Are you thinking of Sisk?
>> Jack Stone: Sisk, yeah. Sisk was a big guy. Well that was just a dream out of
this world. And when that was going along, funny about that time I had probably
drilled about six wells and had a nice new water delivery points and what do we
need these wells for anymore? So we took the wells out, sold them for half price
and covered them over. And so we wouldn't need them anymore and didn't and it
worked wonderfully well. But now we had to buy them all back again, drill all
the wells again and now we're running practically 90% on wells right now.
>> Glenn Gray: Wow.
>> Jack Stone: Unbelievable.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: While that water goes into the ocean not being sold to anybody.
>> Glenn Gray: So for you would you say the biggest boom years for you then
would that be like the 60's through to about the 80's maybe when they started
delivering the...?
>> Jack Stone: When we had plenty of water and the cotton price was good.
>> Glenn Gray: Was cotton the primary crop for you?
>> Jack Stone: At that time it was.
>> Glenn Gray: And what about today?
>> Jack Stone: Well today, the top crop is tomatoes.
>> Glenn Gray: Ah. And tell us a little bit about how things changed once
Westlands started to be irrigated and you got the San Luis Unit installed and
delivering water out your way. How did that transform your operations?
>> Jack Stone: Well it improved the operations just 100%. You had water in all
parts of the land and had pipelines where you could move water from this
section, two or three sections down the line with these underground pipelines;
and those underground pipelines we put in ourselves. We still had the water to
do it with.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And how involved were you with people like Congressman
Sisk and Russell Giffen in getting that whole thing started? Do you remember any
specific events or circumstances you and maybe Jack Woolf and some of these
other people?
>> Jack Stone: Well we went to a million meetings, Jack Woolf and I. Russell
Giffen was the president of Westlands Water District at that time, and then he
quit very shortly thereafter and then I took over. And then things worked well.
It just, just was a wonderful idea and we had the water and coming down the
river every year and there it is and there's that land out there that is that
productive; and now with these new chemicals that we have for fertilizing and
the new equipment we have to work with, boy what a difference. It used to be
when we were harvesting grain down in Tulare Lake we'd have these great big
wooden harvesters, seven men on each one, and now we have one harvester that
does as much as those seven great big harvesters did that we rented from people
that you had them going for their job.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh, uh huh. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that
transformed not only your own particular livelihood, but just how it transformed
the area, the region, and just the economy of locally here?
>> Jack Stone: Well, farming down there and every place that's where I think
things start. You grow a little seed that’s that big and you grow it to a great
big corn plant you've done something. Nowadays when you can't get enough water
to start a cornstalk, well the economy is hampered before it can even get going.
And not only that you might get going and run out of water and you have a loss.
So water is the thing.
>> Glenn Gray: I want to get back to this thing about the Westland Water
District. You were President. How many years were you President?
>> Jack Stone: I think it was 21.
>> Glenn Gray: 21 years. And who came up with the idea? Who really put this
together and said let's create this, this reservoir and lets->> Jack Stone: I guess it was Russell Giffen. He was the President at first.
>> Glenn Gray: First one yeah and so he managed to work this out with Sisk's
influence in Congress and so forth?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know if Congress had much to do with that. That's local
stuff, we all figured that out here. It all worked smoothly.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go back to Washington very often then?
>> Jack Stone: Many, many, many times.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that experience like for you?
>> Jack Stone: Oh it was a great experience--great experience and I was pleased
to be able to do something that would be helpful and go to all those meetings
and try to make things work better. At first we couldn't grow cotton out here.
We didn't have a cotton allotment. So I took a lot of trips to Washington to
change that so that we all, we can grow as much cotton as we want now, but for a
while we had the cotton allotment; and some of the land that I bought, I bought
it just so I could buy the cotton allotment that that ranch had.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and, and starting in about the 70's you start to see a
reaction. People are saying all these farmers--they're getting all this water,
they have these big farms, they're growing all this stuff and these people
didn't agree with that. So you had the National Land for People on the scene and
they filed, they filed a suit with people such as yourself and Westlands. Do you
want to talk at all about that experience?
>> Jack Stone: Well it was an experience that they thought we were being, uh
given something for nothing and we weren’t keeping great heaping stacks of
money, and we wanted that farm to keep going and so did most of the people that
were voters wanted this, these farms to continue. And when there were tough
times and thinking of losing money and laying off people and lowering wages,
farm subsidies helped. Farm subsidies were a hard subject for me to protect but
I did my best.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe a little bit about how the process works because
as I understand it you actually have to give some back. It's not that you're
just getting all this stuff for free. You know it's more involved than that.
>> Jack Stone: Well I don't know about giving anything back except paying taxes
and we paid a heck of a lot of taxes.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's your response to people like the National Land for
People and other newer environmental groups, people, who say these kinds of
things. You know, in effect you had--when the reclamation reform went through
back in the early 80's, how did that, how did that change the way you did things
or the perception of the way things were done out here?
>> Jack Stone: Well it never changed our additional effort. Our additional
effort was to do it right, make, make some money and pay our men right, and that
was one of the reasons why we had to go to great effort to combine some of these
960 acre farms so we could have a farm big enough to support insurance for each
man and proper payments and all the things that make life better.
>> Glenn Gray: And what would you--how would characterize some of the more
recent developments, say in the last 20 years or so? What's your take on the way
things have gone with the water and its availability to you and the way you
operate?
>> Jack Stone: Well I think you drive out to the Westlands Water District now
don't look at the dry fields that we had to give up, but look at the general
industry. There's no farming area in earth any better than that; but we had a
tough time because when we started it out, we had people against it. We had
George Miller, for example, did everything he could possibly do to stop that
operation from being successful. We knew that you need, if you're going to farm
like that, you have to drain the salts that acquire when you irrigate, so we
built 86 miles I think it was, a drain to drain that poor water into the ocean.
Well that first thing that they did was stop that, just turned it off. You
couldn't put any water in that drain and of course they blamed it on--it was
unhealthy for birds but it sure didn't hurt the birds any, especially when there
was a flood. We still couldn't dump any water in there, any of our salt water in
the flood waters that are going into the ocean.
>> Glenn Gray: Now what was--as I understand it when Congress approved to have
the reservoir etcetera, wasn't there a provision that there was supposed to be a
drainage solution that Congress was supposed to support? Why was that not
carried through? Was it because Miller...?
>> Jack Stone: Because Miller and people like that stopped it. In fact, the law
says that the Westlands, no the government will build a drain for the Westlands
Water District. And we sued them and won the suit and they still haven't allowed
us to do it. And that's still hanging fire.
>> Glenn Gray: I'm just wondering how can that be? How can you win the suit but
still nothing gets done?
>> Jack Stone: Try it on the government.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing) It's just seems so incredible.
>> Jack Stone: It's incredible. Why won't they let us drain that?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah I guess it kind of shows how much influence one person such
as Miller can have on an area that's not even part of his district.
>> Jack Stone: He said he'll never allow any of that terrible water to flow
across my land in a little ditch 10 feet wide.
>> Glenn Gray: Well you mentioned the birds and I guess that was the Kesterson
situation, what do you remember about that?
>> Jack Stone: I remember there was one bird that was damaged and he took a
picture of that bird and that's all you saw was a picture of that one bird that
was damaged. They blew that up so that made it look bad to people that likes
birds, that like birds.
>> Glenn Gray: What about--do you recall a situation with the--at about the same
time there was something that went on with the San Luis Unit where there was
some damage that was done or a part of it collapsed or something. Do you
remember anything about that? That's been about 20 or 30 years now?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know, I don’t know what you're talking about except there
was an area where they built the canal and those lands were such that they
subsided.
>> Glenn Gray: Subsided, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: Then of course that didn't work so they had to move it over and
work hard on it to make the canal stay put.
>> Glenn Gray: Now in your area specifically did you have issues with subsidence
then?
>> Jack Stone: No.
>> Glenn Gray: Interesting. Well what would you say--looking back now you've
been farming in this same spot now for over 50 years, um how would you compare
things today to back then? How far have you come and how far do you see that you
have to go?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know how to measure that but I guess I could maybe in
money per acre but to look at the crops that we're raising now, it just looks
gorgeous--green and blue and high and pretty. And when we didn't have these new
fertilizers and care that we have now that we have learned over the period of
land it sure didn't look like that years and years ago.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Well what would you say is the single most important
event or breakthrough that's occurred over the course of your career since you
got into it? If you could isolate any one thing?
>> Jack Stone: Boy that's a hard one to answer. The biggest thing that happened
was the building of the great Westlands Water District. There's thousands of
miles of underground pipe, there's no district like it in the world and 80
second feet of water will come out of the corner of every 160 acres, and it's
good water. First, it's better water than the water we were pumping out of the
ground, and that was just a tremendous change.
>> Glenn Gray: If that hadn't been built, would you still be in business?
>> Jack Stone: I think we'd still be in business but we'd be hampered along.
Right now, we're right back where we started from. We're back building new wells
now.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah because of the water deliveries not being there.
>> Jack Stone: Yeah.
>> Glenn
has made
could go
anything
Gray: But obviously the presence of the reservoir and the irrigation
a big difference for a lot of people in the intervening years. If you
back is there anything that you would have done differently? Is there
that you would have changed if you would have had the power to do so?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd shoot George Miller.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing)
>> Jack Stone: That's the first thing I'd do, and I'd try to--I don't see how we
can't get the people to understand how practical it is rather than to dump this
water into the ocean and not even sell it at all to put it in the system and
sell it for $100 an acre foot for the government; and we built the canal. We
make a payment every year on the cost of having built the canal, so it didn't
cost them eventually anything but it just seems the right thing to do and it was
successful, showed success. I don't know what I could do. The only thing I could
do is compare it to some other districts. We belong to the Lemoore Canal and
Irrigation District over in this area, and the farmers got together and built a
dam. And they get their water whenever it's here; they're suffering on a kind of
a drought. A drought is one thing--I don't mind the drought you can't do
anything about it; but they’re getting they’re water without any restrictions at
all and we have to get along with these people in Washington.
>> Glenn Gray: So apart from maybe building another dam somewhere, do you think
that something like a peripheral canal or what kind of, what are your feelings
or your thoughts on that?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd be all for a peripheral canal. I think that was a good
idea and I was shocked when it went down and I'm shocked that they're not
rebuilding it.
>> Glenn Gray: Well there's talk of it.
>> Jack Stone: There's talk of it.
>> Glenn Gray: Where are they going to...?
>> Jack Stone: And even if they decide to do it, it will take them 10, 20 years
to do it, so I can't see much hope for that.
>> Glenn Gray: Glen: Well, again looking back what are the most important
lessons that you'd say you'd learned from your career that you think it would be
good for people to know going forward? Is there anything that really stands out?
>> Jack Stone: Make sure that whatever you do you don't have the government
involved that depends on votes. Right now the liberals are in power, and they
don't know anything about farming at all, they never saw one and they don't know
if there is one. So I'd stay away from anything that had any dependence on votes
from people.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Are there any particular--you mentioned Congressman Sisk
and you mentioned Russell Giffen, are there any other individuals that you've
worked with or encountered over the course of your career that really stand out
as exemplars, exemplary people that you look back to and see they really made a
big difference good or bad; you mentioned George Miller on the bad side, but any
others?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with them right now. When you get this age, you
don't remember names like you should but there are some good guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, as you look ahead then because you've got—you can look, you
have the perspective, you can look back and you've seen all this stuff happen,
when you look ahead now what do you see--how do you see things?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we're doing the best we can possibly do to farm with less
water and we're using drip systems and sprinkler systems that are very expensive
but they do save some water, and that’s, that’s and we're still drilling wells.
Now I am amazed of how this great valley out here that has captured this water
throughout the year, and then we pump it out, how come it can still supply us
with water; and Lemoore for example, nice city right here on the edge of this
area, I'm wondering with a few years like this their pumps will stop putting out
water too. And when that happens and at the same time have them dump all this
water in the ocean and also having these big pumps that are ready to pump it
down here with a switch turned off. How dumb can he be? It's just unbelievable
and California is in debt now and millions of gallons, no, dollars worth of
water is being dumped into the earth, into the ocean right now that could help
on this debt; and they don’t, they're not doing it.
>> Glenn Gray: So, as we sort of --we've kind of come full circle here so did
you have any final words of wisdom for those of us today or in the near future
who are going to be carrying on here? What do you want to leave us with here
your sort of final thoughts on these matters?
>> Jack Stone: Jack: The first thing is to vote conservative and Republican and
do the best we can to prove to the people that common sense is important, and
figure things out not just bluntly stop something that's doing a good job.
>> Glenn Gray: Are there any particular politicians today that you look to as
being sort of the standard bearers for the future that you would point to?
>> Jack Stone: I should be pointing to Devon Nunes, who seems to be the most
outstanding one and he's a good fellow and they're listening to him a little
bit, but he's so overpowered with, and there's so many more liberals than there
are regulars that he can't do much.
==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====
in Lemoore, and I'm Glenn Gray and I'm with the Madden Library at Fresno State
and I guess I'd like to start off by thanking you for this opportunity to
interview you; and could you start off by telling us when and where you were
born?
>> Jack Stone: Well, I was born in Corcoran in 1917 and we lived in Corcoran a
few years and in 1927 I think, we moved to Hanford and we have lived there ever
since. But after the war when I came back I rented a house in Stratford and
lived there for a few years.
>> Glenn Gray: Well why don't you tell me a little bit about your, your family
background, your parents?
>> Jack Stone: My mother's father was the fire chief of Sacramento in 1888 I
think it was, to 1910. That's the horse days, and there was a lot of interesting
stuff we saw with horses and so on. That was in Sacramento but we lived down
here so we only visited them once in a while.
>> Glenn Gray: And then what about your other, your other grandparents?
>> Jack Stone: And my other grandparents, my father was a judge and I don't know
much about him other than he was a judge, a successful one, a happy one, lived
in Michigan, Jackson, Michigan where my father was born, and when he was in
Roseville here in Sacramento we used to visit him a lot, but other than that, I
didn't see much of him.
>> Glenn Gray: And what brought your father to the valley then?
>> Jack Stone: My father was an engineer--a civil engineer and he started out
his work in Sacramento building the northern Sacramento railroad making trestles
and things like that. And I have some pictures here that show some of that; and
that was where he started out, and then he got a job in Corcoran building the
sewage system, and after the sewage system he got a job with the Kings County
Development Company building levies and canals around Tulare Lake for farming
purposes.
>> Glenn Gray: So you grew up with him doing this obviously so, so you were
aware then of, of how critical the water issues were in the area.
>> Jack Stone: Yes. Water was our big thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go out with your dad and watch these projects?
>> Jack Stone: Yes I certainly did.
>> Glenn Gray: Could you describe some of your--some childhood memories or your
growing up experiences what it was like?
>> Jack Stone: Well when we were in the Tulare Lake area we had a dredger there
to build levies with and it was fun to be on the dredger and watch move these
big chunks of mud and make levies. And then after having made the levies, they
would farm in the lands that were then dry and the object was to keep the levy
from washing away or breaking and losing your crop. So it was a battle to get
the crop out of there before the water got in the way. Of course there were a
lot of times there wasn't any water at all; and you just farmed out there on the
dry land of the old bed of Tulare Lake.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: And I spent a lot of time out there of course where I got my
first jobs and all that stuff. But the other part that I think is interesting is
when I used to travel around with my dad when he was building those three farms;
and that was a drive from Corcoran to Five Points across sage brush land in
search of the darn corners. To sell some of the land you had to find the land to
sell. And that was interesting to me and then of course I finally bought some
land myself but I don't know when we want to get in to that.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, tell me a little bit about--you mentioned some of your
first, first jobs so what were they?
>> Jack Stone: Well my first job was making records of truckloads of grain that
came off the field--just was an easygoing job. Just write down a number of facts
on the truck, that sort of thing. And then I also worked on the harvester
running the header tender wheel up on the top that put the header up and down
and that was interesting. That would get me up at 4:00 in the morning in Hanford
and down to Corcoran and out on the grain harvester. And I often just drove a
tractor that would set up and go and while we're discing something. And of
course that--many different tractors, many different jobs and I think that would
explain that part of the ranch. The other part of the ranch was seen that those
three sample farms were properly taken care of. Of course I was just a kid then.
I'm watching my dad to see that they're growing properly. For example, raising a
crop of, of tobacco; that was quite a thing. No one around here knew anything
about tobacco. So we grew a crop of tobacco and there's a picture of it there-darn good tobacco, but no place to treat it here and no one wanted to buy it. It
was proving to the people that you could grow anything out there on that land
and that's of course why we finally built the Westlands Water District which is
really took up most of my younger working life, was trying to perfect the
Westlands Water District that they're now letting go to heck.
>> Glenn Gray: Now you--when I was talking to you before you had mentioned
Southern Pacific had owned a lot of this land. Did your dad own--he didn't own
actually any of the land?
>> Jack Stone: He was just an employee for the Kings County Development Company.
>> Glenn Gray: And at what point—-did you, were you always interested in farming
yourself then?
>> Jack Stone: Seems like I was. I was following this guy around and I was
always interested in farming and didn't want to do anything else but farm or fly
airplanes one or the other.
>> Glenn Gray: So you'll have to tell us about that. Did--at what point did you
develop this interest in aviation and how does that, how does that correspond
with your interest in farming?
>> Jack Stone: Well that doesn't have too much connection except that was in
1936 when I had my own--well I got my own pilot's license in 1940; and what that
did for me in later years, which when I got involved in politics and in selling
these lands and different things around the country, was to fly to meetings and
so on in an airplane, when some other poor guy had to go in his A-model Ford. I
had an airplane. And I used it very much and loved to fly those darn airplanes.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and when did you buy your first land and start farming?
>> Jack Stone: That was after--well I started farming, I didn't buy it. That was
in 1939 I did a little farming on lease land out in Five Points Area. As soon as
I got going there it all came the war and I thought well I can't handle this and
the wear so I joined the army and sold that ranch.
>> Glenn Gray: What were you growing?
>> Jack Stone: I was growing mainly flaxseed at that time it was kind of
important. That was before the cotton boom and flax is our biggest thing.
>> Glenn Gray: And tell me about your army experiences. What did you do?
>> Jack Stone: Well, first of course as I imagined I joined the Air Force to
find out quickly that I couldn't fly because I'm colorblind; and that stopped
that thank God or I wouldn't be here. So I did my next best thing that I like is
engineering. My father was a surveyor and engineer and I knew of this level all
the time and I got, applied for off the ship in the Corps of Engineers which I
got into three other 51st generals service unit.
>> Glenn Gray: And where did that experience take you? Where were you based?
>> Jack Stone: First off, it took me to officer's school and so on in Virginia
and then it took me to England and I stayed there a year; and then I went to
France and followed the Army clear across into the Bulge although I was
fortunately I was not up in the front being shot at pretty hard; so I felt good
about my position there.
>> Glenn Gray: Where were you in England?
>> Jack Stone: I was around London and Watton. You know where Watton is. There's
an airport there in Watton and we were improving the condition of that airport.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and what kind of products did you work on in France and was
it just following the allied forces as they, as they...?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we would rebuild any bridge that we wanted to rebuild; some
waterways we changed and we did a lot of things that took almost like carpenter
work.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And at what point did you come home?
>> Jack Stone: I came home in 1935.
>> Glenn Gray: ‘45?
>> Jack Stone: ‘45.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and when you got back here were you able to then buy land
and start farming right off then?
>> Jack Stone: Well not too quickly, but I went to Stratford. I doubt if you
know where Stratford is but it's way in the hell out in the country there and
there was some land there available to lease; and I leased it and then I bought
land from neighboring farmers that already had wells drilled and they would sell
me some water and that's the water I used to get going, and then finally I did
well enough to drill my own well and then in fact I finally drilled several. And
another big item that a lot of people forget--you're out there now and it looks
beautiful, nice flattest ground in the world. It wasn't flat then. It was
unlevel and of course you can't irrigate unlevel land, so we had to do a lot of
tractor work to level out the land and pull the mountains down and dump them in
the low places and keep level with it and what we call land plane, land plane it
with big long land planes that were about 50 feet long and level the land that
way. And that has been improved ever since. They were still leveling land better
all the time and of course nowadays we have instruments that really level the
land perfectly that we didn't have then.
>> Glenn Gray: How much land did you have at that time?
>> Jack Stone: Well I started out with 160 acres but I had to change that pretty
fast.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you have people working for you then to do this, do this
work?
>> Jack Stone: I had two guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Two guys? And they were also the guys who worked with you on your
wells?
>> Jack Stone: Oh no I hired the wells.
>> Glenn Gray: And what were you growing at that time?
>> Jack Stone: What was I drilling? I was drilling for water.
>> Glenn Gray: No what were you growing? What crops?
>> Jack Stone: Oh. The main crop was barley—-because, wheat and barley, but
barley because it takes less water than wheat or less water than most anything
so that's the crop that we did most of; and we built a big green elevator for it
and then later we got into cotton because, and that was a great help and we
raised other crops like lettuce seeds and certain products that would pay a
little more.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah. So what can you tell us about those experiences then from
say the 1950's time? What was that like compared to say today if you go back 50
years or so?
>> Jack Stone: One of the big things that I think of--one we kind of had it
pretty well level; now we've got a leveler and that makes a lot of difference
and we didn't use much, if any, fertilizer when we first began. And then came
along anhydrous ammonia and used fertilizer and that has been improved every
year since, better fertilizer and so on. Of course the deep water is not as
productive as surface water, so finally when we got surface water our crops did
a little better.
>> Glenn Gray: Any experience with flooding?
>> Jack Stone: No not out there. Well we had some flooding from heavy rains; we
had some losses but not what I call big losses. But other people connected with
my father's operation, there was farming in the bottom of the Tulare Lake they
had a lot of flooding and you can see pictures of some of that flooding there.
>> Glenn Gray: Any other experiences, memories from back then that...?
>> Jack Stone: I got married
>> Glenn Gray: Ah hah.
>> Jack Stone: that's one big item.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah.
>> Jack Stone: I got married while I was still in the army—
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh.
>> Jack Stone: --on a 7-day leave and it was the greatest 7-day leave I ever
had; and had a nice wife and two boys and a wonderful life thereafter.
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Where’s?
>> Glenn Gray: Where did you meet your wife?
>> Jack Stone: Oh, She went to school with me.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay. And your sons were born um, at this time in the '50's?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah they were born in the 50's. I should be able to bang out the
figures but I can't.
>> Glenn Gray: Okay and they grew up working with you on the farm?
>> Jack Stone: Yes. The one boy that I still have he's running the whole big
ranch now.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's his name?
>> Jack Stone: Bill.
>> Glenn Gray: Bill. Um, so you started expanding your operation--I assumed you
hired more people when you were growing, were growing more crops, different
crops at this time?
>> Jack Stone: Yeah. Now we had one of our big opponents on all this operation
is the government. Well first of course they were building this big irrigation
district, Westland's water district, which I thought was out of this world; it
was a wonderful thing—-its about miles of pipeline out of the ground, water
coming up on every 160 acres and, but first they said you could only have a 100
acre farm. Well of course that's ridiculous. You can't farm with that. And we
finally made many, many trips to Washington--or me and many other people of
course, got that changed to 960 acres. There's been some other ways to get
around that. My son has one 960 acres; I have another 960 acres. You have to go
through all that monkey motion to get around the hazards that the government can
put forth.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that like back when they were starting the Westland's
Water District? I assume you were in on that from the very beginning?
>> Jack Stone: Yes.
>> Glenn Gray: So who organized that? Did Price Giffen or Russell Giffen
spearhead that movement or what was behind that?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with the Congressman's name right now, but.
>> Glenn Gray: Are you thinking of Sisk?
>> Jack Stone: Sisk, yeah. Sisk was a big guy. Well that was just a dream out of
this world. And when that was going along, funny about that time I had probably
drilled about six wells and had a nice new water delivery points and what do we
need these wells for anymore? So we took the wells out, sold them for half price
and covered them over. And so we wouldn't need them anymore and didn't and it
worked wonderfully well. But now we had to buy them all back again, drill all
the wells again and now we're running practically 90% on wells right now.
>> Glenn Gray: Wow.
>> Jack Stone: Unbelievable.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: While that water goes into the ocean not being sold to anybody.
>> Glenn Gray: So for you would you say the biggest boom years for you then
would that be like the 60's through to about the 80's maybe when they started
delivering the...?
>> Jack Stone: When we had plenty of water and the cotton price was good.
>> Glenn Gray: Was cotton the primary crop for you?
>> Jack Stone: At that time it was.
>> Glenn Gray: And what about today?
>> Jack Stone: Well today, the top crop is tomatoes.
>> Glenn Gray: Ah. And tell us a little bit about how things changed once
Westlands started to be irrigated and you got the San Luis Unit installed and
delivering water out your way. How did that transform your operations?
>> Jack Stone: Well it improved the operations just 100%. You had water in all
parts of the land and had pipelines where you could move water from this
section, two or three sections down the line with these underground pipelines;
and those underground pipelines we put in ourselves. We still had the water to
do it with.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. And how involved were you with people like Congressman
Sisk and Russell Giffen in getting that whole thing started? Do you remember any
specific events or circumstances you and maybe Jack Woolf and some of these
other people?
>> Jack Stone: Well we went to a million meetings, Jack Woolf and I. Russell
Giffen was the president of Westlands Water District at that time, and then he
quit very shortly thereafter and then I took over. And then things worked well.
It just, just was a wonderful idea and we had the water and coming down the
river every year and there it is and there's that land out there that is that
productive; and now with these new chemicals that we have for fertilizing and
the new equipment we have to work with, boy what a difference. It used to be
when we were harvesting grain down in Tulare Lake we'd have these great big
wooden harvesters, seven men on each one, and now we have one harvester that
does as much as those seven great big harvesters did that we rented from people
that you had them going for their job.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh, uh huh. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that
transformed not only your own particular livelihood, but just how it transformed
the area, the region, and just the economy of locally here?
>> Jack Stone: Well, farming down there and every place that's where I think
things start. You grow a little seed that’s that big and you grow it to a great
big corn plant you've done something. Nowadays when you can't get enough water
to start a cornstalk, well the economy is hampered before it can even get going.
And not only that you might get going and run out of water and you have a loss.
So water is the thing.
>> Glenn Gray: I want to get back to this thing about the Westland Water
District. You were President. How many years were you President?
>> Jack Stone: I think it was 21.
>> Glenn Gray: 21 years. And who came up with the idea? Who really put this
together and said let's create this, this reservoir and lets->> Jack Stone: I guess it was Russell Giffen. He was the President at first.
>> Glenn Gray: First one yeah and so he managed to work this out with Sisk's
influence in Congress and so forth?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know if Congress had much to do with that. That's local
stuff, we all figured that out here. It all worked smoothly.
>> Glenn Gray: And did you go back to Washington very often then?
>> Jack Stone: Many, many, many times.
>> Glenn Gray: What was that experience like for you?
>> Jack Stone: Oh it was a great experience--great experience and I was pleased
to be able to do something that would be helpful and go to all those meetings
and try to make things work better. At first we couldn't grow cotton out here.
We didn't have a cotton allotment. So I took a lot of trips to Washington to
change that so that we all, we can grow as much cotton as we want now, but for a
while we had the cotton allotment; and some of the land that I bought, I bought
it just so I could buy the cotton allotment that that ranch had.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah and, and starting in about the 70's you start to see a
reaction. People are saying all these farmers--they're getting all this water,
they have these big farms, they're growing all this stuff and these people
didn't agree with that. So you had the National Land for People on the scene and
they filed, they filed a suit with people such as yourself and Westlands. Do you
want to talk at all about that experience?
>> Jack Stone: Well it was an experience that they thought we were being, uh
given something for nothing and we weren’t keeping great heaping stacks of
money, and we wanted that farm to keep going and so did most of the people that
were voters wanted this, these farms to continue. And when there were tough
times and thinking of losing money and laying off people and lowering wages,
farm subsidies helped. Farm subsidies were a hard subject for me to protect but
I did my best.
>> Glenn Gray: Can you describe a little bit about how the process works because
as I understand it you actually have to give some back. It's not that you're
just getting all this stuff for free. You know it's more involved than that.
>> Jack Stone: Well I don't know about giving anything back except paying taxes
and we paid a heck of a lot of taxes.
>> Glenn Gray: And what's your response to people like the National Land for
People and other newer environmental groups, people, who say these kinds of
things. You know, in effect you had--when the reclamation reform went through
back in the early 80's, how did that, how did that change the way you did things
or the perception of the way things were done out here?
>> Jack Stone: Well it never changed our additional effort. Our additional
effort was to do it right, make, make some money and pay our men right, and that
was one of the reasons why we had to go to great effort to combine some of these
960 acre farms so we could have a farm big enough to support insurance for each
man and proper payments and all the things that make life better.
>> Glenn Gray: And what would you--how would characterize some of the more
recent developments, say in the last 20 years or so? What's your take on the way
things have gone with the water and its availability to you and the way you
operate?
>> Jack Stone: Well I think you drive out to the Westlands Water District now
don't look at the dry fields that we had to give up, but look at the general
industry. There's no farming area in earth any better than that; but we had a
tough time because when we started it out, we had people against it. We had
George Miller, for example, did everything he could possibly do to stop that
operation from being successful. We knew that you need, if you're going to farm
like that, you have to drain the salts that acquire when you irrigate, so we
built 86 miles I think it was, a drain to drain that poor water into the ocean.
Well that first thing that they did was stop that, just turned it off. You
couldn't put any water in that drain and of course they blamed it on--it was
unhealthy for birds but it sure didn't hurt the birds any, especially when there
was a flood. We still couldn't dump any water in there, any of our salt water in
the flood waters that are going into the ocean.
>> Glenn Gray: Now what was--as I understand it when Congress approved to have
the reservoir etcetera, wasn't there a provision that there was supposed to be a
drainage solution that Congress was supposed to support? Why was that not
carried through? Was it because Miller...?
>> Jack Stone: Because Miller and people like that stopped it. In fact, the law
says that the Westlands, no the government will build a drain for the Westlands
Water District. And we sued them and won the suit and they still haven't allowed
us to do it. And that's still hanging fire.
>> Glenn Gray: I'm just wondering how can that be? How can you win the suit but
still nothing gets done?
>> Jack Stone: Try it on the government.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing) It's just seems so incredible.
>> Jack Stone: It's incredible. Why won't they let us drain that?
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah I guess it kind of shows how much influence one person such
as Miller can have on an area that's not even part of his district.
>> Jack Stone: He said he'll never allow any of that terrible water to flow
across my land in a little ditch 10 feet wide.
>> Glenn Gray: Well you mentioned the birds and I guess that was the Kesterson
situation, what do you remember about that?
>> Jack Stone: I remember there was one bird that was damaged and he took a
picture of that bird and that's all you saw was a picture of that one bird that
was damaged. They blew that up so that made it look bad to people that likes
birds, that like birds.
>> Glenn Gray: What about--do you recall a situation with the--at about the same
time there was something that went on with the San Luis Unit where there was
some damage that was done or a part of it collapsed or something. Do you
remember anything about that? That's been about 20 or 30 years now?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know, I don’t know what you're talking about except there
was an area where they built the canal and those lands were such that they
subsided.
>> Glenn Gray: Subsided, yeah.
>> Jack Stone: Then of course that didn't work so they had to move it over and
work hard on it to make the canal stay put.
>> Glenn Gray: Now in your area specifically did you have issues with subsidence
then?
>> Jack Stone: No.
>> Glenn Gray: Interesting. Well what would you say--looking back now you've
been farming in this same spot now for over 50 years, um how would you compare
things today to back then? How far have you come and how far do you see that you
have to go?
>> Jack Stone: I don't know how to measure that but I guess I could maybe in
money per acre but to look at the crops that we're raising now, it just looks
gorgeous--green and blue and high and pretty. And when we didn't have these new
fertilizers and care that we have now that we have learned over the period of
land it sure didn't look like that years and years ago.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Well what would you say is the single most important
event or breakthrough that's occurred over the course of your career since you
got into it? If you could isolate any one thing?
>> Jack Stone: Boy that's a hard one to answer. The biggest thing that happened
was the building of the great Westlands Water District. There's thousands of
miles of underground pipe, there's no district like it in the world and 80
second feet of water will come out of the corner of every 160 acres, and it's
good water. First, it's better water than the water we were pumping out of the
ground, and that was just a tremendous change.
>> Glenn Gray: If that hadn't been built, would you still be in business?
>> Jack Stone: I think we'd still be in business but we'd be hampered along.
Right now, we're right back where we started from. We're back building new wells
now.
>> Glenn Gray: Yeah because of the water deliveries not being there.
>> Jack Stone: Yeah.
>> Glenn
has made
could go
anything
Gray: But obviously the presence of the reservoir and the irrigation
a big difference for a lot of people in the intervening years. If you
back is there anything that you would have done differently? Is there
that you would have changed if you would have had the power to do so?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd shoot George Miller.
>> Glenn Gray: (laughing)
>> Jack Stone: That's the first thing I'd do, and I'd try to--I don't see how we
can't get the people to understand how practical it is rather than to dump this
water into the ocean and not even sell it at all to put it in the system and
sell it for $100 an acre foot for the government; and we built the canal. We
make a payment every year on the cost of having built the canal, so it didn't
cost them eventually anything but it just seems the right thing to do and it was
successful, showed success. I don't know what I could do. The only thing I could
do is compare it to some other districts. We belong to the Lemoore Canal and
Irrigation District over in this area, and the farmers got together and built a
dam. And they get their water whenever it's here; they're suffering on a kind of
a drought. A drought is one thing--I don't mind the drought you can't do
anything about it; but they’re getting they’re water without any restrictions at
all and we have to get along with these people in Washington.
>> Glenn Gray: So apart from maybe building another dam somewhere, do you think
that something like a peripheral canal or what kind of, what are your feelings
or your thoughts on that?
>> Jack Stone: Well I'd be all for a peripheral canal. I think that was a good
idea and I was shocked when it went down and I'm shocked that they're not
rebuilding it.
>> Glenn Gray: Well there's talk of it.
>> Jack Stone: There's talk of it.
>> Glenn Gray: Where are they going to...?
>> Jack Stone: And even if they decide to do it, it will take them 10, 20 years
to do it, so I can't see much hope for that.
>> Glenn Gray: Glen: Well, again looking back what are the most important
lessons that you'd say you'd learned from your career that you think it would be
good for people to know going forward? Is there anything that really stands out?
>> Jack Stone: Make sure that whatever you do you don't have the government
involved that depends on votes. Right now the liberals are in power, and they
don't know anything about farming at all, they never saw one and they don't know
if there is one. So I'd stay away from anything that had any dependence on votes
from people.
>> Glenn Gray: Uh huh. Are there any particular--you mentioned Congressman Sisk
and you mentioned Russell Giffen, are there any other individuals that you've
worked with or encountered over the course of your career that really stand out
as exemplars, exemplary people that you look back to and see they really made a
big difference good or bad; you mentioned George Miller on the bad side, but any
others?
>> Jack Stone: I'm not coming up with them right now. When you get this age, you
don't remember names like you should but there are some good guys.
>> Glenn Gray: Well, as you look ahead then because you've got—you can look, you
have the perspective, you can look back and you've seen all this stuff happen,
when you look ahead now what do you see--how do you see things?
>> Jack Stone: Well, we're doing the best we can possibly do to farm with less
water and we're using drip systems and sprinkler systems that are very expensive
but they do save some water, and that’s, that’s and we're still drilling wells.
Now I am amazed of how this great valley out here that has captured this water
throughout the year, and then we pump it out, how come it can still supply us
with water; and Lemoore for example, nice city right here on the edge of this
area, I'm wondering with a few years like this their pumps will stop putting out
water too. And when that happens and at the same time have them dump all this
water in the ocean and also having these big pumps that are ready to pump it
down here with a switch turned off. How dumb can he be? It's just unbelievable
and California is in debt now and millions of gallons, no, dollars worth of
water is being dumped into the earth, into the ocean right now that could help
on this debt; and they don’t, they're not doing it.
>> Glenn Gray: So, as we sort of --we've kind of come full circle here so did
you have any final words of wisdom for those of us today or in the near future
who are going to be carrying on here? What do you want to leave us with here
your sort of final thoughts on these matters?
>> Jack Stone: Jack: The first thing is to vote conservative and Republican and
do the best we can to prove to the people that common sense is important, and
figure things out not just bluntly stop something that's doing a good job.
>> Glenn Gray: Are there any particular politicians today that you look to as
being sort of the standard bearers for the future that you would point to?
>> Jack Stone: I should be pointing to Devon Nunes, who seems to be the most
outstanding one and he's a good fellow and they're listening to him a little
bit, but he's so overpowered with, and there's so many more liberals than there
are regulars that he can't do much.
==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====