For many, sweat paid dividends. For the rest, it was the only way they knew. A calloused-palm work ethic still prevails, particularly in the oil fields, vineyards and orchards, where so much of Bakersfield's modern economy still resides. To our way of thinking, sweat, persistence and patience take a person farther than idle strategizing. A day's pay for a day's work is still the dogma here.
Dreamers have little use for plows, and plowmen no use for dreamers.
The population of metropolitan Bakersfield has doubled to nearly 400,000 in the past 20 years, and it is expected to increase by another 50 percent in the next decade. The crosstown automobile route that took 20 minutes just a decade ago takes 30 minutes today and will take a full hour in 10 years. Too often we have provided for the future only when change becomes urgent or unavoidable. The potential, as far as Bakersfield's first homeowner was concerned, must have seemed staggering, the possibilities infinite. But that was 1860, before Bakersfield was Bakersfield or even Baker's field, before asphalt and concrete defined 400 square miles of bustling metropolis, before California's immense valley revealed itself to be finite indeed.