A replica of a farm worker's cabin/Lee Dalton

I literally stumbled upon Cesar E. Chavez National Monument by chance. I’ve been on one of my wanderabouts for nearly a month now. Just going wherever my truck takes me. I’d been on the east side of the Sierras at Manzanar and had wandered south to Mojave, California, where I hoped to find some aviation museums or something interesting in the place where Burt Rutan builds his incredible flying machines and where Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space ventures are based.

Big disappointment. No visitor facilities. In fact, one person even told me that in all honesty, they don’t want visitors. Too much traffic.

But the western side of the Sierras were calling me. I decided to head for Giant Sequoia National Monument (administered by the U.S. Forest Service) and on to Sequoia National Park and even Yosemite — maybe. So there I was, cruising north on California Highway 58, admiring beautiful spring green of the Tehachapi Mountains when a big Arrowhead caught my eye.

Whoa!

Fast exit toward the tiny town of Keene. Follow some signs down a narrow, twisty road until I find a small sign telling me I’ve arrived.

Or have I?

I turn onto a very narrow driveway of broken concrete and come to a junction with no sign. I think I should turn left, but it’s so narrow that I’m afraid of becoming rimrocked and unable to turn my little trailer around. So I head the other direction back toward the county road and return to the tiny Post Office that serves Keene. The fella there assures me I’ll be okay, so I go back and turn left. Sure ‘nuff, I’m soon at the neat but unimposing little building that served once as headquarters of the United Farm Workers Union and is now the monument’s visitor center.

It’s not open and there’s no sign telling when it might be. But I can see the door is unlocked, so I open it and peek inside. A man mopping the floor says, “We’re closed.” “When will you open?” I ask. “In about five minutes.”

Cesar Chavez' boyhood story/Lee Dalton

I decide to hang around and wander back outside to a beautiful but simple rose garden. Up some stairs and I spot what appears to be some kind of shrine ahead. It’s where Cesar Chavez and his wife Helen are buried beneath two simple headstones. I walk a little farther among some deserted buildings and some that look to be occupied. Puzzling. It looks like it was some kind of military installation long ago.

Then I see a woman raising flags on three poles outside the visitor center so I walk over that way. Except for memories of controversies back a long time ago, I don’t know much about Cesar Chavez. I recall hearing people calling him the Chicano Martin Luther King, but that’s about it.

So I drift past the reception desk and into the first room. Like all the others, it is lined simply with small, framed black and white photos interspersed with a variety of posters and artifacts of a time not too long past when Chavez and others fought for bargaining rights and better working conditions for minority farm laborers in California and Arizona and other places. I begin remembering the battles to protect workers from insecticides and dangerous machinery and to provide them with at least basic semi-decent living conditions in farm labor camps.

I learn that, even today, California is apparently the only state in the country with a law that guarantees farm workers the right of collective bargaining. I look into the room that had been Cesar’s office — preserved just as it was then with the only electronic interpretive panel in the place. Push some buttons and you’ll hear stories of the man and his work and life. You’ll learn how Chavez studied the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and tried his best to make sure his organization and the people in it never used violence or hatred. He knew they didn’t need to rely on stirring fear to spread their message. They simply told their stories and made their pleas and relied on the good sense of others to gain support for what they were trying to do.

Farm workers' rally against California grape growers/Lee Dalton

I begin to remember some of the hatefulness that played out on TV news. Loud shouts of Communist! and worse. Much worse. I remember some years later how there was an uproar in my own city in Utah over the proposal to name one of our streets for Cesar Chavez. A street named for a Mexican? Horrible! I also remember even more recently, in 2012, another explosion in the halls of Congress and elsewhere when President Obama had the audacity to sign a proclamation establishing this place as a monument.

That’s about it. Cesar E. Chavez National Monument is today a simple place. I saw no one wearing an NPS uniform. Only the man with the mop and woman at the desk. There’s no auditorium showing films every few minutes. Just the black and white photos, Cesar’s office, and a small exhibit that tries to give visitors an idea of living conditions in those labor camps.

One of the most impressive displays is a collection of visitors’ notes pinned to a bulletin board. Many contained messages like: “We need MORE men like Cesar Chavez. Especially today!”

Yes. Especially today when powerful people are working hard to destroy labor unions and when others are using fear as a weapon to fan distrust and even bring back hatred of people who speak different languages or worship differently or speak a language that’s not familiar. I recall a time when I was teaching fourth and fifth grades in a tiny rural school. Each year we had a batch of youngsters move in and out soon after. Their parents were migrant workers. Some of the kids spoke little English. Some lived in battered old campers or in somewhat slummy worker camps nearby. They were usually shy and normally far behind where they should have been academically. But they tried. Their parents actually came to teacher conferences, although their children often had to translate for them.

And I remember Raul. He was more fortunate than most of them. He lived with two older brothers who worked for a local rancher. They lived in a real house on the ranch. Raul was probably the very best student I ever taught. His work was always finished and on time. It was neat. He was intensely curious. He even prepared lessons every day to teach his classmates and teacher to speak Spanish. He did a great job of it. He was, one of his brothers explained, the hope of the family. Raul had actually been born in America. He was a citizen. He was the one designated to become the family scholar. The one who would be first to attend college. To become a lawyer or doctor or dentist. The one who would make them all proud. They were dreamers and he was their dream. His teachers could easily see a great future ahead of that little boy.

When fifth grade started, I asked how his summer had been. He made a face. “I won’t ever go back to Mexico again.” “Why not?” “I got beat up three times.” “Why?” “Because I speak Spanish with an American accent.”

Then, one day, disaster. Raul’s brothers showed up in their truck loaded with all their possessions and pulled Raul out of school. His oldest brother had broken his ankle climbing off a tractor. He couldn’t work. So the rancher fired him and tossed them out of the house he had been providing. There were hugs and tears all around our classroom as we bid Godspeed to Raul and watched him disappear into whatever the future held for him.

I have no idea what happened to Raul. He’d be about 40 now and I pray that he made it somehow. For me, it was remembering Raul that brought home to me how much we need courageous people like Cesar Chavez. By making the world better for some people, they make it better for all people.

Headstone for Cesar Chavez/Lee Dalton

Will we ever learn that?

It’s time to leave so I buy a book about Chavez to give my granddaughters and ask the lady at the desk what this place had been before it became home to Chavez and his efforts. It was a sanitorium for victims of tuberculosis. The United Farm Workers needed a headquarters and purchased it after it had lain abandoned for many years. Chavez and other union leaders lived in some of the houses nearby. In fact, some are still residences and the headquarters for people who are trying to carry the work on today.

It’s a simple place. Literature the lady handed me promises that in days to come, there will be more. But it’s still new. A lot needs to be done.

Somehow I was surprised to find this place in such a beautiful and serene setting. I guess I was expecting that it would be in a flat bean field or orchard down in the Central Valley. I can certainly understand why Señor Chavez chose a place like this where he could find respite from his struggles and the hate he had to endure.

Yes, we do need men like Cesar Chavez today. And if you ever find yourself anywhere near the tiny town of Keene along Highway 58, you need to stop here. This place has lessons to teach to anyone willing to listen.