I wish I could say the two are related, but such is life in the Golden State these days.

Look: By now, you’ve made up your mind on the fast-food wage issue, and I’m not going to try to change it. You have your reasons for favoring (or opposing) the law, and I’ve got mine.

I do, however, think my reasons might be a little different than yours.

The experience I gained at my first job — which paid $3.15 an hour — taught me so much about life, there’s no way I’d go back to exchange it for anything more lucrative. Sometimes a real-life education is the best long-term investment you could ever hope to make.

At least, it was for me.

I got my start in this business as a freelancer while I was still in high school. The pay was 25 cents per column inch. That meant if I wrote a 10-inch story, I got $2.50. I quickly figured out if I wrote a 40-inch story instead, I got 10 bucks. (Thus began a habit of overwriting that continues to this very day.)

I also learned if I was going to keep gas in the tank of my Dodge Charger, and make those daily drives up to Shasta College, I’d need a second source of income. So, at 18, I started working the late-night shift at Craig Brothers Shell in Corning.

If you were going to work in a gas station in those days, the Craigs were the guys you wanted as bosses. They not only paid higher than minimum wage ($2.65 in those days) — they were the most kind, ethical and considerate people you’d ever want to be around. Plus, we’d work six days on, then two days off — ensuring that every week, we’d get eight hours of overtime pay on our check. And overtime was more than four dollars an hour!

The gas tank of my Charger had never been happier.

In those days, there were actual full-service gas stations, and that’s what we did. Every time a car pulled up, we’d go out and pump the gas. We’d also check the oil, wash the windshield and do anything else the customer requested, including checking the air pressure in the tires. It didn’t matter if it was a 115-degree summer day (perfect for dealing with overheated radiators) or a cold winter night with rain and 40-mile-per-hour winds; when a customer pulled up, you went outside and did your job.

Life lesson number one: If you’ve got a job with a roof over your head, be thankful.

My first day on the job, the price of regular gas was 66 cents a gallon. Exactly one year later, with talk of an “oil shortage” (remember that?) dominating the media, the price had skyrocketed to $1.66. Like anyone who did this job in those days, I got called every name in the book by sticker-shocked customers. The kindest, I think was “communist.” The worst? Use your imagination, and I can pretty much promise you’d be right.

I remember one especially angry guy grabbing a fistful of pennies from his pocket and firing them at me from five feet away, screaming, “Here! This is for you and your buddies in Washington!” (Yes, pennies can hurt.)

Life lesson number two: There’s nothing harder to deal with than people, and no matter what you do, or how well you do it, some people aren’t going to be happy. Learn to deal with it. Grow some thicker skin, because life isn’t easy.

Through it all, though, I learned to appreciate the overwhelming majority of customers who were kind. I learned to value the importance of co-workers who had your back and the invaluable gift of having employers who cared about you as people. I’ve had a lot of great bosses, but I’ve never had any better than Bill or Angus Craig. Their kindness was something I never forgot and something I do my best to emulate with employees even today.

Call those life lessons three, four and five.

Of course, at the time, nobody had yet invented the term “living wage.” It was just understood we were starting at the bottom of the economic food chain and if we wanted to climb up, well, the way to do that was by working hard and learning.

But now? We have politicians enacting laws that could only be conceived by people who have never had to operate a business, much less meet a payroll. And how they’ve determined that fast-food workers should be paid $4 an hour more than millions of other people doing often-critical jobs is beyond me.

And how have businesses reacted to California’s new wage law? By slashing thousands of jobs. Gee. Didn’t see that one coming.

I understand there are plenty of billionaires on this planet who could stand to be a little more generous with their money, especially in terms of wages. I also wonder how many of these people first got ahead in life because of lessons — including a strong work ethic — that they gained after some employer was kind enough to offer them a job.

Feels to me like something pretty big is being lost here. You really can’t put a price on that.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He’ll be on vacation next week, and his column will return April 14.

But first, about that Dodgers-Padres series, which ushered in the 149th season of Major League Baseball in Seoul earlier this week. The Dodgers won the first game largely because a ground ball literally went right through the glove of Padres first baseman Jake Cronenworth — apparently, they don’t make ’em like they used to.

And then, the Padres came back to win the second game 15-11. That was enough to make at least one wise guy say “15 to 11? Wow. That friend of Ohtani’s must have taken the ‘over.’ ”

(Too soon?)

Anyway, here we are again. The grand old game is back, and grumpy old men such as myself are ready to embrace it again, the game’s annual attempts to run us off notwithstanding.

It’s often been said that baseball is too good of a game to screw up, but you sure have to give the owners and commissioner credit for trying. In fact, in this very space just a year ago, I went down a fairly long list of complaints about the game’s rule changes, and how they were destined to flop worse than the 1962 Mets.

I’m here today to admit I was wrong about pretty much everything I said. The rule changes, in a nutshell, not only made for a better viewing experience for the attention-span-challenged fan; dare I say they were barely even noticeable to those of us who have worshipped at the altar of Mickey Mantle since the long-ago days of our youth.

How was I wrong? Let us count the ways.

First, pitch clocks. I figured that was going to be a train wreck that would lead to so many arguments and clock violations, it wouldn’t save any time at all. Boy, was I wrong. In fact, the only time I really noticed the rule was during those frequent occasions when I’d try to rush into the kitchen for a snack without missing a pitch. Unlike past years, I failed. A lot. (On a related note, my “time to the kitchen and back to my chair” speed increased by at least 20 percent.)

On average, MLB games were 24 minutes shorter in 2023 than they were in 2022. That added up to a faster viewing experience for most people, and more time for after-game snacks for me.

And then there was the rule about extra innings and the “ghost runner.” A year ago I said I actually liked extra innings — an old coworker of mine called them “bonanza stanzas” — because they tended to weed out the real fans from the hangers-on. I’d jump onto Facebook at midnight in the 17th inning of a Giants game, say “who’s still with me?” and immediately get a half-dozen responses from fans all over the country.

On the other hand, I can’t recall a single extra-inning game in 2023 where I walked away wishing “Darn! If only that game had gone another hour and a half.” (This is probably due to the fact that while the Giants were just 68-78 in games decided in 9 innings in 2023, they were actually 11-5 in extra innings. Thus, from my point of view, those games usually ended at exactly the right time.)

Now, remember that outcry about bigger bases? I didn’t even remember that change took place until I went back to read my column on the rule changes from a year ago. I thought they would look funny, and even out of place, because they were so much obviously bigger. The only thing that looks unusual to me because of size these days is the slimmed-down Pablo Sandoval.

Meanwhile, the bigger bases (and new pickoff rules) led to an increase in the number of stolen bases, and an all-time low in caught stealing. If that gets even one general manager to fixate on launch angles to a lesser degree, I’m all for it.

And finally, the shift. I initially hated the rule outlawing extreme defensive shifts like none other. Instead, it felt good to see balls hit up the middle actually go into center field again, and I can’t remember once slapping the couch because a fielder was waiting in an unexpected position to take away a base hit — unlike a half-dozen times per night the previous several seasons.

So I was wrong in a few ways, and the game I’ve followed since 1968 is still right in a lot of ways. It’s springtime, the boys of summer are back for another run, anything is possible and as I do almost every year, I’m going to go ahead and predict that the Giants — who made some nice signings this offseason while also getting rid of Gabe Kapler — are going to surprise a lot of people this season.

In fact, I’ll even say you could bet on it.

(Too soon?)

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com. Thursday is Opening Day, so he may be slow to respond between 1 and 4 p.m.

Surprised by the question, I said, “Yeah … but it wasn’t to watch a show. I was on the stage.”

The look on her face told me that, for the first time in many years, I actually had a story that I hadn’t already told her.

So I told her, and today (for reasons we’ll get to in a few hundred words), I’m telling you, too.

It was December 1984. I had driven to Los Angeles with two of my closest friends, Jeff Gravitt and Rob Crawford. The trip wasn’t for a happy reason; our good friend Stan Greene — just 25, like the rest of us — was in UCLA Medical Center, dying of leukemia.

I’ll always be glad we made the trip. It gave us a final chance to see Stan, who we lost about a month later. And since he would have been the first to say, “Please don’t spend your entire trip visiting the sick guy in the hospital,” we also squeezed a good amount of adventure into those couple of days. Picture three small-town guys cruising all around Hollywood in a Dodge Charger in 1984, having no clue where they were going or what dangers might be lurking around the corner.

Yep, that was us.

Sometime between visiting Tower Records and accidentally ripping our pants on nails strategically stuck into the chairs at the Whiskey a Go Go, we headed west on Hollywood Boulevard. That’s when I first saw the Hollywood Bowl sign.

“Hey, the gate’s open — let’s just drive on in,” I suggested. Hearing no strong objections, I pulled my Charger up the hill toward the iconic shell. Eventually, thanks to a series of fortuitously unlocked gates, I somehow managed to drive right up to the back of the stage.

Nobody was around. It was as if Wallyworld was closed, but they’d left a key for the Griswolds.

Now, Jeff and I never went anywhere without our guitars and an amplifier in those days. We immediately figured this was probably the best chance we were ever going to get to play the Hollywood Bowl. So Jeff grabbed his orange and purple Rickenbacker 360 out of the trunk, I grabbed my cherry red Gibson SG and a Gretsch tube amp, and the three of us walked onto the stage, staring out at thousands of empty seats and benches.

We plugged in and tuned up and looked at each other. We’re on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. What do we do now? 

Easy. Play “Twist and Shout,” just liked the Beatles opened with when they played there in 1964.

So we launched into the song, the racket from our one shared amplifier reverberating around the hillside. And in no time at all, other people started showing up.

Looking up the hill to the left, I first noticed maybe five folks walk in. Then a dozen more. Oddly enough, they started pulling out cameras and taking pictures of us. Finally, after maybe 40 people had assembled, one guy walked in and started talking. He saw us on the stage, did a double take, shrugged and continued his spiel.

He was a tour guide, and the “crowd” was a group of tourists who (unlike us) had actually paid money to see the inside of the place.

They must have thought we were part of the act, because they walked closer to the stage and just kept taking photos. So after launching into “Squeeze Box,” we started posing — a leap here, a windmill there. When one guy yelled “Smash your guitar!” I knew we had ’em eating out of the palm of our hands.

After a few minutes, the group went on its way, and we decided it would probably be a really good idea if we left, too. All I know is, somewhere out there in this cluttered old world, probably in boxes in long-forgotten dusty storage lockers, there must exist hundreds of photos of me, Jeff and Rob onstage at the Hollywood Bowl, and at least one shot of me pretending to smash my guitar.

My point for all of this (and once again, thank you for reaching it) is this: Forty years after my last visit to the Hollywood Bowl, I’m going back. There’s a special Jimmy Buffett tribute concert April 11, and to say it’ll be a star-studded affair would be an understatement. The lineup includes Paul McCartney, the Eagles, Kenny Chesney, Zac Brown, Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crow, Jon Bon Jovi, Jack Johnson, Pitbull, Eric Church, Brandi Carlisle and Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, all united to making his dying wish — “keep the party going” — a reality.

I’ve already bought tickets, and I guess it’ll be interesting to finally see the Bowl from the audience’s point of view.

But I’m bringing a guitar, just in case.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com.

We hear that sentiment a lot around these parts. We’ve heard it about Valley’s Edge, and the downtown renovation plan, and if you go back a few years we heard it about California Park and even that “new mall” (as us age-burdened citizens still call it).

I’ll even wager the first to say “let’s leave this area the way it is” were the Mechoopda, and we all know how well that worked out.

So, yeah. Welcome or not, people have been flocking here ever since John Bidwell signed the paperwork for Rancho Arroyo Chico. The days of the little college town almost entirely west of Highway 99 in 1970 (population 19,580) are long gone. So are the pre-California Park days of 1980 (population 26,716). And so, sadly, are the pre-Camp Fire days, when our population swelled from 92,000 to 112,000 overnight.

People are going to keep moving to the north state regardless of how badly some other people don’t want them to come. The question is, where are they going to live?

That was much of the argument both for and against Valley’s Edge, which got boot-heeled at the ballot box this week.

Those of us who supported the project were impressed by the fact that thousands of people, of every political shade in our purple little town, had provided several decades worth of input — from the adoption of the green line and the General Plan (under leadership much more liberal than what we have today) to the seemingly never-ending series of public hearings, meetings, environmental reviews and approvals.

In short, an awful lot of people spent an awful lot of effort over a great number of years meeting the widely agreed-upon benchmarks as to what could be built, and where — and the end result was a plan some of us viewed as likely as good as it was ever going to get.

But none of that mattered when an equally determined number of today’s citizens took up opposition, for reasons ranging from “not enough low-income housing” to “climate change” and a dozen things in between. Smart Growth Advocates beat some tough odds by gathering more than enough signatures to place a referendum on the ballot about the the Specific Plan approval. Then, they did an even better job of helping to rally Chico’s (mostly) progressive side of town to defeat it.

And defeat it, they did. All registered voters of Chico had an equal opportunity to speak at the ballot box, and the 20,000 or so who actually bothered let it be known they were largely against this 1,449-acre development on the lava cap east of town.

You have to give the opponents a lot of credit. They fought tirelessly and passionately for what they believe, and they rallied the voters in a way supporters of the project couldn’t do, despite spending a good amount of time and money trying. The campaign did turn into another heated battle between the various sides of town that always seem to be battling each other over something or another — turning off a good number of would-be voters in the process, I suspect — and this time, the progressives won big.

It was a crushing setback for the proponents and a joyous cause of celebration for the victors. I can’t help but suspect the biggest cheers of all were coming from out of town — say, in places like Orland and Biggs and Corning, where growth is happening and not being frowned upon to the same degree as on the outskirts of east Chico.

Because, again, people are going to keep flocking to the beautiful north state, just as they’ve been doing in ever-growing numbers for more than 150 years. Many of the people who move to the north state are going to work in Chico. That’s going to mean more cars on already-overcrowded roads approaching from every direction. The defeat of Measure P will make it easier to achieve the City of Chico’s climate change goals — an admirable fact championed by Smart Growth Advocates and others — but at what cost on a regional level?

“What about infill,” you might ask? “Build up, not out?” Infill supporters like to point out that Chico’s projected housing need through 2045 is 9,500 units, and that 9,400 could be built without sprawling into the foothills.

OK, any predictions how many of those 9,400 infill units are actually going to be developed the next 10 years in Chico, where “not in my backyard” reigns supreme? Developers say much of that ambitious infill strategy simply doesn’t pencil out anyway. That, and the wringer the Valley Edge developers just went through, has me skeptical about the eagerness of other developers to plan much of anything in Chico, much less low-margin infill units.

Anyway, back to my point, which is that I find the entire “we need to leave Chico just as it is” narrative fascinating. It’s never worked. It’s never going to work. Towns grow — especially great towns like Chico, where so many people fall in love with the area during that first college visit and just never go away.

For all the talk about keeping things the same, the best we can realistically hope to do is keep the best parts of our town intact and safe while planning wisely for future growth, regardless of what shape that ultimately may take.

I also can’t help but notice that this entire Valley’s Edge discussion actually did show our town isn’t likely to change. It was a big reminder that Chico is the same way it’s been for a long time, and will likely stay for a very long time to come.

Hopelessly divided.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com.

Through the latest update as of 9:30 p.m., Chico voters were rejecting Measure P by a count of 8,221-5,211.

The companion measure, Measure O, was also trailing 8,265-5,144.

The first round of results included ballots received before Election Day, according to Butte County Clerk-Recorder Keaton Denlay. He said they could have been received by mail, in-person drop offs or in drop boxes. The counting of all ballots is due to be completed by March 12.

Of the two measures, Measure P was the one that received the bulk of attention from both proponents and opponents of Valley’s Edge. The measure asked voters whether or not to adopt the Valley’s Edge Specific Plan as approved by the Chico City Council at its meeting Jan. 3, 2023. Measure O asked voters whether to approve the General Plan amendment to reflect the adoption of the Specific Plan.

The Chico City Council voted 5-1 to allow the development following a contentious three-and-a-half hour public hearing. Councilor Sean Morgan, who made the motion for approval, called the proposal “as good as it can possibly get.” Bill Brouhard, who has been planning the development for the past 15 years, noted “a decade-long history of refinements, tweaks or changes in response to city staff and community members in the public.”

Those changes weren’t enough to deter some members of the public from continuing in their efforts to halt the project. Just three days after the council’s approval, a group called Smart Growth Advocates announced plans for a referendum to put the project on the ballot, and also said it intended to join forces with the Sierra Club for a lawsuit. The opponents objected to what they called the “sprawl” of the development and said the city needed to focus its future growth efforts on infill, not developments in the foothills.

The referendum drive ended up succeeding. Of the 8,373 signatures on the Specific Plan, 6,372 were deemed to be valid following review by the county clerk-recorder’s office. On the General Plan referendum, 6,444 signatures were valid. Both marks comfortably exceeded the 5,800 needed for success.

This story will be updated as more results are tabulated Tuesday night.

Not surprisingly, I got far more responses to that invitation than we have room in the newspaper to print. But, as promised, I’ll be sharing a cross-section of those today.

We’ll get to that. First, though, I want to touch on something else.

At the end of that column, I reminded you that the front-line workers of PG&E are not to blame here. They’re fantastic people who often do Herculean work in their various arenas to keep our lights on, and we should be thankful for them, regardless of how many billions of profit dollars the upper end of the company is yanking out of its customers’ pockets.

I got some great reminders of that this week courtesy of Paul Moreno, PG&E’s marketing and communications principal. He read the column and was quick to reach out with some reminders that should help all of us who are wondering why our bills are so high and are curious if something can possibly be done about it.

Good news — sometimes, there is!

Moreno reminded me that customers with questions about their bill can call the customer service number at 800-PGE-5000 during business hours and ask for a bill analysis. PG&E also offers online tools and information at pge.com, and even a “home energy checkup” that can be done online.

I’ve be sharing that information with everyone who reached out to me about their bill. I encourage the rest of you to check, too. The last thing PG&E wants is more unhappy customers; while it’s fair to complain, it’s also fair to check with them to see if there’s something they can do.

And, about those bills … here’s the promised sampling of stories (horror and otherwise) I was told about this week. I must say I was surprised by the number of people who said they’ve switched to solar — but didn’t always find the financial boon they’d expected.

John D’Ewart, Chico: “A few years ago, my wife and I moved into a new home, so we got solar installed. The first year our ‘True-Up’ was about $100, the next year about $200, then $300. This year it was over $1,700 for such items as transmission, distribution, electric public purpose programs, wildfire fund charge, and taxes and other.”

Tim Milhorn, Chico: “My bill went from averaging $200 to last month’s $545. Yet the Public Utilities Commission keeps granting the increases…”

Janet Owen, Chico: “My horror story isn’t as bad as others, bad enough for me. I’m retired collecting Social Security only. I keep my thermostat at 65, I wear layered clothing and a jacket inside. Minimal washing machine, dryer (electric) and dishwasher use. Leave lights off. TV is on a lot. My recent bill was $217.08.”

Autum Thomas, Oroville: “$1,421.98. Yes, you read that correctly. In February 2023, our bill was $719.76, which was bad enough, considering in 2022 our bill ranged from $250-$450 per month … We’re seriously thinking about selling and moving to Texas or North Carolina.  We’d take a pay cut but at this point I think we’d be better off.”

Don Thomas, Orland: “I had not noticed the large bill you speak of because I installed solar panels in 2019. … We are now a two-person family in a 2,080 square foot home. I calculated what our usage was for the last month, and based on the current rate, our electricity would have cost us $310. Natural gas $299 — ugh.”

Paula Wilson, Chico: “We lived in Hawaii for 20 years and moved to Chico a little over two years ago to be near our family. The entire time we were in Hawaii, we heard over and over again that we were living in the state with the highest utility rates in the country. … Our bill was mostly in the range of just shy of $200.  So I was looking forward to a cheaper utility bill by moving back to California, even though we would now have both AC and heat to pay for. Since moving here, our bill has only been below $300 in probably three months of each year — the times when we don’t need either heat or AC.”

And on the home front? An analysis of our bill showed our usage was up. How, I’m not sure, considering (as noted in this space a week ago) we’ve gone from four people in the house to two the past few years while replacing every single appliance.

But it is what it is, and as long as we have a Public Utilities Commission (appointed by the governor, approved by the state Senate) whose job could be done much more cheaply if the state just bought a good old-fashioned rubber stamp, it’s not likely to change.

On the bright side, rates are expected to go up only 1.6% next year. So far. Pending future rate increase requests, of course.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com.

• Reaction to the latest PG&E profits has been swift and furious. Just a few hours after the story and our editorial were published, I’ve gotten an earful from readers with comments ranging from “call them what they are — a criminal enterprise” to “every single customer needs to join together and refuse to pay their bill. What are they going to do?”

For today, I’m going to join each of you in complaining about big PG&E bills — and also invite you to tell me about yours for a follow-up column next week.

Four years ago, our little home in the country included myself, my wife and her two sons. Our PG&E bill averaged around $200 a month, often in the $170 range. This was with four people taking daily showers, doing oodles of laundry, running four computers and two televisions, and doing it all on, shall we say, less-than-energy-efficient appliances.

Since that time, the boys have grown into men and moved out on their own. Our nest is down to two people and one TV. In the past three years, we have replaced the washer, dryer, refrigerator, freezer, air conditioner, oven and dishwasher with new energy-efficient models.

Our PG&E bill last month was $527.88 — up almost exactly $300 from just 11 months ago.

But wait. It gets worse.

For one, I don’t bother to take a shower every day anymore (my apologies for that), and we’re doing far less laundry than ever before. We also take part in that PG&E “peak period” nonsense where you agree not to run your appliances during high-demand periods for a better rate. (Like, say, summer, when it’s 112 degrees. Yes, folks, this very column is often produced with a great deal of actual sweat involved.)

Also, we don’t burn any natural gas. We heat the home in the winter with a wood-burning fireplace.

Five hundred and twenty seven dollars and 88 cents, whereas going back over a seven-year period, the average was around $200.

We’re at a loss to understand this. Half as many people in the house, every appliance replaced and almost three times as large of a bill? I’d think it has to be some kind of mistake, except I’m hearing similar stories from so many of you.

• Just to note one: An old friend told me her 85-year-old mother is in the CARE program and lives on a fixed income. Her PG&E bill last month was over $800.

• Is this a good time to remind everybody that company officials are slapping themselves on the back this week for “our story of progress” following news their profits jumped 24.6% in a year, to $2.24 billion — and that they’re expecting even bigger returns in the following year?

• Of all the unmitigated gall to emerge from the company’s announcements, this may have been the one that struck the most chilling chord: “Our story of progress continued in 2023, including further reducing wildfire ignitions.”

Ever stop to wonder who ends up in a position to brag about “reducing” the number of wildfire ignitions? Yep, only companies that caused an abhorrent number of wildfire ignitions in the first place. That strikes me as an odd thing to celebrate.

• And, ultimately, isn’t that the biggest frustration with all of this? PG&E raised its rates in 2018, and 2019, and 2021, and again in 2023, with yet another 13% increase hitting us on January 1 of this year. Most of those increases came post-Camp Fire under the guise of the utility needing additional money to improve its infrastructure and fire safety — things PG&E had badly neglected for far too long.

It’s one thing to pay through the nose because of a company’s deadly mistakes. Watching the company enjoy record-setting profits as a result of those rate increases is something else.

• In fairness, a reminder for kindness here: The people you see in the blue trucks doing all of the actual work for PG&E are not your enemy. Be kind to them. Too often, customers’ anger is directed at them. They don’t deserve that any more than the rest of us deserve to get fleeced by their employer.

If you’ve got a horror story about your PG&E bill — or, even if you’ve got something nice to say about the company — please email it to editor Mike Wolcott at mwolcott@chicoer.com. We’ll print a sampling of the responses in this space next week.

And for what? Why, to keep the hackers and thieves away, of course. There’s just no trusting people these days, and the fact we need multi-level passwords to protect ourselves online — not to mention all the extra security features of our homes and businesses — continues to strike me as, well, depressing.

Now, before any of you accuse me of another “get off my lawn” column, let me be clear: This is most definitely going to be another “get off my lawn” column. That’s because I remember an era, and a place, where thievery was not only highly frowned upon, it just wasn’t accepted as something most normal people would sink low enough to do.

On that note, I present my memories of the Flournoy Store.

The store — still open to this very day — was a little more than a mile from my childhood home, just a few minutes’ bike ride. They relied almost entirely on the support and trust of the local community. In turn, they trusted the community right back, to a degree that doesn’t even rank on the feasibility scale here in 2024.

First, believe it or not, you didn’t need to worry about bringing money to the store. Just about every local family had a tab. You’d get your groceries, lay ’em on the counter and either Cap or Florence Whitlock would write everything down in a little yellow pad. Every couple of weeks, dad would bring the checkbook, and we’d settle up.

No interest. Just pay when you can.

That was one part of the trust they showed the community. The other will sound much more implausible, especially today.

There were two gas pumps at the store. The pumps weren’t locked, and there was no technology inside the store that told them how much customers had pumped. Thus, you’d just fill your tank, go inside and tell them how much you owed, and they’d take your word for it.

Of course, sometimes you’d need gas when the store wasn’t open. That was OK too. You’d just gas up and come back to pay another day.

Yes, for a good number of years out there, we actually got gasoline on the honor system.

Eventually a few bad apples started taking advantage of that situation, which led to the Whitlocks taking the previously unheard of step of padlocking the pumps at night. But even then, they made sure their regular customers knew where to find the key: Under a big, highly conspicuous rock just a few feet from the pump.

Let’s compare all of that with today. It’s been decades since I bought gas anywhere that didn’t require me to either pay first or at least insert my card. Thieves have even ruined that experience with card-scamming equipment. You not only have to pay in advance, somebody might be ripping you off while you’re doing it.

These days, thanks to the benevolent nature of our California state legislature and the fact we have far more criminals than we apparently have the ability to arrest or punish, stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is a misdemeanor. That means law enforcement often doesn’t have the means or interest to investigate these cases; they’re far too busy with bigger crimes that our overwhelmed district attorney’s offices will hopefully be able to prosecute. I’m trying to imagine Cap Whitlock telling a district attorney “I’m not sure how much gas they took, because we’ve never locked the pump.”

That little store, and community, probably sent me into the world with a warped sense of loyalty and an unwavering feeling of trust for anyone who showed they deserved it. As our state has become so overwhelmed with crime it’s barely even illegal anymore, I’m left with a pretty low tolerance level for the thieves who put us in this situation. I know there are a myriad of reasons for crime; I also understand that in most cases, crime wasn’t the only option.

I often wonder how we got from there to here. It’s almost as if we’re all so busy protecting our passwords, we’ve barely noticed something much more important has already been taken away.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com.

Hopefully you’ve done the same. Wasn’t that easy?

Honestly, it’s never been easier to vote, and there’s a lot to be said for the convenience of doing it by mail. I definitely miss the days of proudly marching to the polls on Election Day, but I’ll be the first to admit it wasn’t as easy for some people as it always was for me.

Now the polling place comes to you, right there in your own home. Voting couldn’t be easier unless a person (AI-generated or otherwise) hand-delivered the ballot and sat down with you and put a pen in your hand and helped move your arm.

All of which begs the never-ending question: What in the world is wrong with people?

In 2022, the numbers say there were right around 255.5 million people of voting age in our country.

Care to guess how many of them were actually registered to vote? Less than two-thirds, just over 161 million.

Out of those 161 million people, do you know how many actually bothered to vote on Election Day, when we were tasked with choosing all 435 members of the House of Representatives?

Try 107.7 million.

In other words, only 42 percent of potential voters participated in an election many called “The most important of our lifetime,” just as a never-ending parade of demagogues claimed about every election since I first voted 44 years ago.

And we wonder why the country is so screwed up?

With apathy like this, it’s safe to say we are getting, and will continue to get, the government we deserve — one that’s often disinterested in the needs of the people, but 100% vested in doing whatever it takes to stay in power.

How else can you explain the gems we’ll likely have atop our respective two-party system again this fall? We’ve got one guy who (according to his own Department of Justice) is too old and forgetful to be prosecuted for stealing top-secret documents, and another guy whose history of stealing documents is so far down the list of things he’s in hot water about, it doesn’t even crack the top five.

We will likely once again nominate two men whose greatest claim to fame is this: They may be only person in the country who could possibly lose to the other guy.

Is this kind of disfunction any surprise in a system that basically empowers a couple of states to determine which two people will run for president in the fall? What’s up with that? Everyone from Tim Scott to Ron DeSantis already said they “don’t see a path to victory” even though at least 99% of the delegates were still up for grabs.

That’s like the 49ers gaining 4 yards on the first play of the Super Bowl and the Chiefs throwing up their hands and walking off the field. “Sorry. We just don’t see a path to victory after that opening 1 percent of the game didn’t go our way. Momentum and donors, you know.”

I don’t get it. Coming from a guy who proudly wrote in Joe Walsh for president in 1980 (and hasn’t missed an election since), I think what this country needs is, frankly, a good old-fashioned slap upside the head. People need to wake up, and maybe it’s your job to help wake them up. You can start by telling them, “Don’t believe any news source that always seems to be cheering for the same side” — yep, that’s a lot of them, especially in the national TV news world — “and throw every piece of unopened political mail directly where it belongs, into the return-to-sender file. Please learn to research and think for yourself.”

Unfortunately, as long as the slick and soulless people who run politics continue to come up with scary narratives that convince two-thirds of the population that “the other side is a lot worse than us,” and we allow them to get away with it, it’s not going to change.

But it could happen if the almost-60% of people who are eligible to vote in this country, but don’t, finally get off their apathetic rear ends and get involved. You want to scare the hell out of everybody in Washington? Having another 148 million previously unattached voters deciding to participate would do it. So would a sudden interest in people with both R’s and D’s after their names to place issues over personalities — and hold elected officials accountable to their duties (like, say, passing a budget on time, something Congress hasn’t done since 1996, but now I’m just talkin’ silly).

Or we can all just keep plodding along, leaving our noses stuck up against the screen of our iPhones, garnering news from sources that tell us only what we want to believe to be the truth, while telling ourselves, “I’d better get around to filling out that ballot that got mailed to me and study up on things … whoops, already too late,” and then wondering, “How in the world did we end up in such a mess?”

For starters, I’d suggest looking into the mirror. Even if it’s the one on your phone.

Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com.

Roots are good. Roots are important. And sometimes, it’s important to remember our family roots and reflect in wonder upon the far-reaching connections we have with other people — or, even the world.

(Warning: This may qualify as a weird sort of celebrity-encounter column, but hang with it. There’s a lot of cool history here.)

I was the fifth generation to live on our family ranch at Flournoy, located about 14 miles west of Corning. My great-grandfather, Jesse Wolcott, purchased several surrounding homesteads somewhere around the turn of the 20th century, resulting in a 960-acre ranch that I’ll always think of as home.

In those days, the fields had names — usually the name of the family that had homesteaded the parcel in the first place. On our ranch, we had the Loutz field, the Hamilton 80 and, perhaps most special of all, the Hanks Place.

The Hanks Place was homesteaded by a man named, believe it or not, Daniel Boone Hanks. A little research shows he came here from Booneville, Kentucky, in the late 19th century and was named after the famous frontiersman many of us remember from grade school.

The Hanks Place consisted of a small two-bedroom home surrounded by oak trees just beyond a bluff overlooking a small creek and a beautiful valley. Table Mountain has nothing on this site in terms of wildflowers; I’m lucky enough to visit this place from time to time, and I must admit, Daniel Boone Hanks had a tremendous eye for beauty.

(By the way, with a name that great, merely calling him “Hanks” would never do; he must be referenced as “Daniel Boone Hanks” at every opportunity.)

In April 1920, after Daniel Boone Hanks and his wife, Mary, had raised 11 children in that house, he passed away. His house — atop sled-runners — was pulled by a tractor and moved about a mile to the front part of the ranch. It still stands about a half-mile west of the Flournoy School, and it was my first home.

Flash ahead to the mid-1980s. My parents, Elwyn and Darlene Wolcott, were home on the ranch one day when a visitor showed up. He introduced himself as Amos Hanks and said he was trying to find his childhood home; he thought it was close by, but wasn’t sure exactly where, and was hoping my parents might recognize his last name and offer some advice.

My dad, of course, knew just the place Amos Hanks was talking about. He drove him through the hills to that well-hidden corner of the ranch — passing his towed-away childhood home on the way — and regaled Amos with stories of his grandfather, Daniel Boone Hanks.

Amos Hanks was visibly moved by all of this. He found a few mementos from the family homestead — an old hinge where a gate once hung, and a couple odds and ends — and thanked my dad for the visit to the Hanks Place.

He returned every year for a spell. Finally, around 1991, he told my father this would probably be his final trip, as he’d been quite ill for a while and probably wouldn’t make it back another year. He mentioned he was writing a book and was going to mention my dad in it.

Then, practically as an aside, he said, “I wouldn’t have lived this long if my son wasn’t an actor.”

Curious, my dad asked who his son was.

Amos Hanks seemed startled by the question, as if shocked he’d never mentioned this fact to my dad in the past.

“Oh. Tom Hanks,” Amos Hanks said. “Tom Hanks is my son.”

Amos Mefford Hanks — grandson of Daniel Boone Hanks, son of Ernest and Gladys Hanks and father of Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, the Academy Award-winning actor — died in 1992 and is buried in the Paskenta Cemetery about 18 miles west of Corning, just a few tombstones down from his grandfather, Daniel Boone Hanks, and surrounded by numerous members of the Hanks family.

Roots, and connections, are truly amazing, and capable of surprising us when we least expect. And if Tom Hanks happens to see this and wants to visit his great-grandfather’s homestead someday, I’m guessing we could probably make that happen.

Daniel Boone Hanks would have wanted it that way.

Mike Wolcott is editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com. He’ll be back with a new column next week.