Butch Ardullo's name cropped up frequently, mostly in stories related to his leadership in the farm organization. A photo of him and his wife at a Fresno charity ball showed a big man with a bulldog face and a gray crew cut hovering over a willowy, refined-looking, dark-haired woman. Luck-of-the-draw genetics had favored Scott with his father's build and his mother's facial features.
Scott had inherited athletic skills, as well. The first time I found his name was under one of those football-hero group shots-players selected for the Kern County all-star game kneeling and beaming in front of a goalpost. Scott had played halfback forTehachapi High, acquitted himself honorably.
No pictures of Terri Ardullo, which made sense. She wasn't aTreadway native, had grown up in Modesto.
Carson Crimmins's name showed up regularly, too. The other rich man in town. From what I could make out, Crimmins had started out as Butch Ardullo's ally in the fight for the family farm, but had switched course by the early seventies, expressing his frustration with low walnut prices and the rising cost of doing business, and advertising his willingness to sell "to the highest serious bidder."
No pictures of him. No comments from Butch Ardullo. The Intelligencer avoided taking sides.
March 1969. An entire issue devoted to Katherine Stethson Ardullo's funeral. References to a "lingering illness," and to the hiking death, years before, of the oldest son, Henry Junior. The article was augmented by old family snapshots and pictures of Butch and Scott at graveside, heads hung low.
August 10, 1974. Orton Hatzler mourned Nixon's resignation.
The following December, a hard frost damaged both the Ardullo and the Crimmins crops. Butch Ardullo said, "You've got to be philosophical, ride out the bad times with the good." No comment from Carson Crimmins.
March 1975. The death of Butch Ardullo. Two extra pages in a memorial issue. This time, Scott stood alone in the cemetery. Carson Crimmins said, "We had our differences, but he was a man's man."
June 1976. Announcement of Crimmins's marriage to "the former Sybil Noonan, of Los Angeles. As we all know, Miss Noonan, a thespian who has acted under the name Cheryl Norman, met Mr. C. on a cruise to the Bahamas. The nuptials took place at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. Maid of honor was the bride's sister, Charity Hernandez, and cc-best men were Mr. C.'s sons, Carson Jr. and Derrick. The newlyweds are honeymooning in the Cayman Islands."
Two photos. Finally a look at Carson Crimmins. Black tie. In the first shot, he and his new wife cut a five-tiered cake. He looked to be around sixty, tall, stooped, bald, with a too-small face completely overpowered by a beak of a nose. The nose bore down upon a fleshless upper lip. A pencil mustache added movie-villain overtones. Tiny, dark eyes glanced somewhere to the left-away from the bride. His smile was painful. A wary owl in a tuxedo.
The second Mrs. Crimmins-she who'd narrowed Jacob Haas's eyes and hardened his voice-was in her late thirties, short, with full arms and a lush body packed into a tight silk sheath of a sleeveless wedding dress. What looked to be a deep tan. Spiky tiara perched upon a pile of platinum hair. Lots of teeth, lipstick, and eye shadow, a generous offering of cleavage. No ambivalence in her thousand-watt smile. Maybe it was true love, or perhaps the rock on her finger had something to do with it.
The second picture showed the Crimmins boys flanking the newlyweds. On the left was Carson Junior, around seventeen. Haas had said Derrick was younger, but that was hard to tell. Both boys were thin, rangy, with prominent noses and a touch of their father's avian look. Better-looking than their father-stronger chins, broader shoulders. The same thin lips. Carson Junior was already his father's height, Derrick slightly taller. Junior's hair was wild, blond, curly, Derrick's dark and straight, hanging past his shoulders. Neither boy seemed to share the joy of the day. Both projected that immovable sullenness unique to teenagers and mug-shot criminals.
April 1978. The front-page story was a visit to Treadway by representatives of a company called Leisure Time Development. Carson Crimmins's invitation. Scott Ardullo said, "It's a free country. People can sell what's theirs. But they can also show some guts and hold fast to the farming tradition." No follow-up progress reports.
July 1978. The wedding of Scott Ardullo and Theresa Mclntyre. The bridal gown, a "flowing affair complete with 10-foot train and hand embroidery, including Belgian lace and freshwater pearls, was imported from San Francisco." No cleavage here; Theresa Ardullo had favored long sleeves and full cover.
I moved on to the next batch of papers.
A half-year after the developers' visit, there was still no mention of land sales or negotiation, offers from other companies.
Crimmins's overtures rejected because Scott Ardullo had refused to sell out and no one wanted to deal for half a loaf?
If so, Crimmins wasn't commenting on the record. In July 1978, he and Sybil took a cruise to the Bahamas. Snapshots of her on deck, doing justice to a flowered bikini, a tall, iced drink in one hand. The text said she'd "entertained the other guests with lilting renditions of show tunes and Broadway classics."
Nothing of interest till January 5, 1980, when I came across an account of "The Farm League New Year's Ball and Fund-raiser" at the Silver Saddle Lodge in Fresno.
Mostly pictures of people I didn't recognize. Till the bottom of page four.
Scott Ardullo dancing, but not with his wife.
In his arms was Sybil Crimmins, white-blond hair long and flowing over bare tan shoulders. Her gown was black and strapless; her breasts were barely tucked into its skimpy bodice as they pressed against Scott's starched white chest. Her fingers were laced with his and her big diamond ring sparkled between his digits. He looked down at her, she gazed up at him. Something different in his eyes-at odds with the solid-young-businessman image-too much heat and light, a hint of stupidity.
Dopey surrender.
Maybe it was too many drinks, or the novelty of holding someone who wasn't your wife, feeling her warm breath against your face. Or maybe a big party had offered the two of them the chance to flaunt something they'd been savoring in dark, musky rooms.
It could be why Jacob Haas had tightened up when talking about Sybil Crimmins. Scott, a boy he'd long admired, straying with a platinum-haired strumpet from L.A.?
As I stared at the picture, it seemed to give off waves of heat. Worth well more than a thousand words. I was surprised the Intelligencer had published it.
I found an editorial three weeks later that might've explained that:
After much soul-searching, as well as witnessing, firsthand, the triumphs and the travails of those noble enough-and some would say sufficiently quixotically inclined-to brave the elements of Nature as well as the much more malignant Forces of Big Government, this newspaper must weigh in on the side of rationality and self-preservation.
It s all fine and well for those born with silver spoons in their mouths to pronounce righteously about abstract ideals such as the Sanctity of the Family Farm. But to the bulk of the populace, those hardy but bowed men entrusted with the day-to-day, backbreaking labor that keeps the ground fertile, the branches laden, and the trucks loaded with Bounty, the story is quite another one.
Joe Average in Treadway-and, we 'd venture to wager, any agricultural community-toils day after day for fixed wages, with no promise of security or profit, or long-term investment. In most cases, his meager plot of backyard and his domicile are all he owns, and sometimes even that is tethered to some Financial Institution. Joe Average would love to plan for the Future, but he's usually too overwhelmed by the Present. So when Good Fortune smiles in the form of rising land values, offering said Mr. Average the chance of Real Gain, he cannot be condemned for seizing the opportunity to afford his family the same safety and comfort that the more fortunate regard as their birthright.