This Land

by Dan Barry

  Lucin is not even a ghost town; it is a ghost junction, where lonely dirt road crosses lonely railroad track, and the most prominent inhabitants are a snake, a beetle and some large ants. Step on the parched earth to examine that toppled Lucin sign, and dust kicks up.

  Nearly 1,800 miles away, in Houston, one of the partners in the company selling the land answers his telephone. His name is Sanjit Tayi, and he says he has never set foot on these desolate 40 acres that his company describes as “high growth.”

  “What’s there?” he asks. “Is there a gas station or something there?” Uh, no.

  If you’ve always dreamed of owning parched, inaccessible property in Utah, you may have missed your chance. Essentially to protect people from themselves, Box Elder County officials are cracking down on how remote lands within its sprawling boundaries are misleadingly advertised and illegally subdivided.

  The county has notified more than 3,000 people that the property they bought for hundreds or thousands of dollars, often sight unseen, appears to have been carved from much larger parcels in violation of county and state zoning laws. The owners of these illegally subdivided properties were informed that they cannot sell their land, cannot develop their land—and, in many cases, cannot even visit their land, because there is no access.

  Other than that, welcome to Box Elder County!

  The county plans to file criminal charges against the offending developers. In the meantime, it has hired several temporary workers to handle the flood of calls from landowners who received notices of noncompliance. Some callers say they bought a cheap quarter-acre just for the kick of owning land in Utah; others say that suburban sprawl will reach the desert someday, and when that day comes, oh boy.

  “They’re calling from all over the world, basically,” says LuAnn Adams, the county recorder and clerk. “I know I’ve had Germany, Australia.”

  Ms. Adams says she has seen advertisements for desert land that include photographs of the glittery waters of Willard Bay, a mere three hours’ drive from the property for sale. She has also fielded calls from people who say they own a lot on Sunset Drive.

  Although Sunset Drive does not exist, she readily assures them that “there are beautiful sunsets out there.”

  Land speculation, of course, is nothing new. What is new is how the Internet has quickened the timing referred to in a familiar saying. Now, it seems, there’s a sucker born every second.

  Officials say that another run on desert land years ago prompted them to create zoning laws requiring that most lots for sale in the county’s western desert be a minimum of 160 acres. Nevertheless, in recent years entrepreneurs have bought, subdivided and sold the parcels, and then have filed deeds with the recorder’s office—though, alas, without securing the required approval of zoning officials.

  Take, for example, the 160-acre parcel that one of the more active entrepreneurs, Larry Madsen, of Bluffdale, Utah, subdivided in the middle of nowhere, well more than a mile from where unpaved Little Pigeon Road ends. The map of that parcel is now a crazed checkerboard of small boxes, each one bearing the name of a proud owner.

  Mr. Madsen declined this week to discuss his real estate business. He wrote in an email message that “I am simply a retired person who purchased some investment land and sold part of it when I retired to help cover living expenses.”

  One of his customers is Reza Stegamat, a business manager who lives near Pittsburgh. Two years ago Mr. Stegamat saw one of Mr. Madsen’s advertisements on eBay, became convinced that Utah land would be a good investment and bought five acres for about $1,500. A year later he made his way to Box Elder County and tried to find his property, somewhere in the vicinity of Little Pigeon Road.

  “I kept going back and forth,” he recalls. “But there was nothing, really.”

  Out where Mr. Stegamat once searched in vain, the desert stretches like a dream-swallowing ocean. For all the petty deceit and human folly, it remains the same, hostile and beautiful, daunting and serene.

  On this spring evening, a snake slithers, the warm breeze offers a phantom kiss, and unseen birds sing the chuckling, rarely heard song of Lucin Town.

  For a Family of Migrant Farmworkers, a New Season Is Dawning

  BRECKENRIDGE, MINN.—AUGUST 5, 2007

  Minerva Hinojosa and her family migrated north again last month, traveling from the Texas bottom of this nation to its Minnesota top to weed the sugar beet fields of a farmer named Blaufuss. Once here, they each claimed the hoe that felt truest in their hands by carving a telltale mark into the wooden handle.

  For Ms. Hinojosa, 22, this is how it has always been: the Hinojosas working the Blaufuss fields, following the rows of beets deep into the green distance, then working back down new rows, their hoe blades getting duller with every hack at the black earth. All for about $22 an acre.

  But she also knows how profoundly this migrant life is changing. It hit home a couple of weeks ago when her cellphone trilled while she was working in the fields, her long brown hair tucked under a Texas Longhorns cap.

  Holding the hoe with one hand, she flipped the phone open with the other.

  “Hello?”

  Three decades ago, well before she was born, some of Ms. Hinojosa’s relatives began traveling 1,600 miles north, from Weslaco, Tex., to Breckenridge. Jim Blaufuss needed help with his sugar beets, and so a bond between two families was made.

  Among those arriving from Texas every season was Eleuterio Hinojosa, a Mexican-born laborer accustomed to traveling far for work, whether to the fields or to the cotton gins that long ago changed the feel of his handshake by taking three finger tops. His wife, Rachel, and their ever-expanding family would join him on those long trips north, including his daughter Minerva, an American citizen who says she has been migrating “since I was born.”

  The Blaufuss family eventually built a squat, one-story duplex with air-conditioning on their farm to accommodate the Hinojosas and their many relatives. The workers felt fortunate; not all growers provided housing, and those who did sometimes offered little more than shacks.

  The hundreds of migrant families of Breckenridge became a tight but time-sensitive community, here for the sugar beet crop, then gone, some back to Texas, some to Michigan to pick apples. Not all local residents accepted them, that is for sure. But on summer Sunday afternoons, at least, they claimed a town park as their own, for music and barbecues.

  “You’d see no white people,” Ms. Hinojosa recalls.

  Back then, she was just one of many Texan children running about. Every morning she would take a bus to a supplemental education program for migrant children at the elementary school, overseen by a teacher named Bill Mimnaugh. She studied, played, got fed and stayed out of the fields—at least, that is, until she was about 11.

  At 13, Ms. Hinojosa became pregnant. She named the boy David, took a hard look at what kind of woman his mother would be, and went back to school. This meant that every summer she would hoe her rows all day, then head off for night classes at Mr. Mimnaugh’s education program, determined.

  Early last month the Hinojosas returned again to that squat duplex in Breckenridge, where they found a freezer full of meat, courtesy of Mr. Blaufuss. “They’re family,” he explains.

  But this Texas contingent included only Ms. Hinojosa, her parents, her older brother Jay and her son, David—meaning that the many bunk beds in the house would remain empty.

  People in Minnesota say that changes in sugar beet farming, including the use of improved herbicides, have reduced the need for migrants; that adequate housing remains a problem; that cuts in the migrant education program have caused child care and schooling problems for migrant families.

  At the same time, the children of migrants are finding different paths, says Jay Hinojosa, 36, who has just changed out of jeans that are damp with sweat. “Some of them pursued education,” he says. “Some joined the Air Force, the Navy. Other family members decided it wasn’t worth it.”

  Still, the Hinojosas see f
amiliar Texan faces in Breckenridge, including that of Maribell Molina, 35, who migrates now to work for the Tri-Valley Opportunity Council as a family service liaison for the migrant education program. She says that older migrants return because they need the money, they feel loyal to employers, and they want to set an example.

  “To show their kids the value of the dollar,” she says.

  A couple of weeks ago the Hinojosas rose again before dawn. Rachel Hinojosa baked the tortillas and made the beans that would be breakfast and lunch. Eleuterio Hinojosa packed the coolers and sharpened the hoe blades with his metal file. Minerva roused David, now 7, and got him dressed. The family of five drove to the field and began hoeing at 5:30.

  While David dozed in the pickup’s cab, the Hinojosas hacked at the weeds inhibiting the subterranean growth of the sugar beet, which is used to sweeten your soda, your cookies. After a while, Rachel Hinojosa drove David to the same migrant education program that his mother attended, run by the same Mr. Mimnaugh, who is sometimes called the “Dairy Queen guy” because on Fridays he rewards good students with cool treats.

  “The same school!” Ms. Hinojosa exclaims. “I love it!”

  The Hinojosas worked their rows, paused to eat, then reached again for their hoes. The sun arced high and hot over the Minnesota flatness. A cellphone rang, and Ms. Hinojosa answered.

  “Finally!” she shouted, and the Hinojosas around her immediately knew:

  Minerva Hinojosa, daughter of migrants, had graduated with a degree in English from the University of Texas-Pan American, and would be teaching this fall at her alma mater, Weslaco East High School. She is the family’s first college graduate.

  Her mother said, “Thanks to God.” Her father said the family should celebrate by hoeing another row. And so they did.

  On the Bottle, Off the Streets, Halfway There

  SEATTLE, WASH.—NOVEMBER 11, 2007

  The Moocher introduced them years ago down by the ferry terminal, near that “No Loitering” sign scratched up to read “Know Loitering.” It was Ed, meet Daryl, Daryl, Ed, between sips and slugs of bottom-shelf whiskey and high-octane beer.

  Soon, in the blathering small talk that kills time, Ed Myers and Daryl Jordan identified a bond beyond a shared dislike for the Moocher, who drank but never bought. They both had survived the same firefight in Vietnam, it seemed; brothers now, in blood and booze.

  Together they panhandled with Nam Vet Needs Help signs at the highway entrance, converted their proceeds into Icehouse beer and Rich & Rare whiskey, and shared their nights in the perpetual dusk beneath the elevated highway, taking turns seeking the full sleep that never came, so loud was the traffic above, so naked were they below, in addled vulnerability.

  Now and then they came in from the elements, sometimes to the same shelter, sometimes to separate shelters, sometimes to the Sobering Support Center on Boren Avenue, where you store your shoes and coat in a black plastic bag, have your vitals checked, accept the soup and juice or not, then fold up on a thin mat over concrete.

  If separated, Daryl would spend the early morning pacing the dark streets, until finally here would be Ed, already to drinking to quell those first shakes of the day. And the two would return to Know Loitering.

  They came to know the jagged pieces of each other’s bottle-shattered past, the broken marriages, the lost jobs, the ghosts. Daryl still sees what he saw in Vietnam. As for Ed, he was working on a fifth one day in his Iowa hometown when suddenly, there before him, stood his father and grandfather, telling him for shame. That both were dead only underscored the point.

  Ed dumped the bottle and didn’t drink for 12 years—until one day he did. Back he fell to the hard, hard streets, which at least offered up another man who understood. Daryl.

  Hell, Daryl was there that Thanksgiving time when a woman slipped Ed two twenties; they gave thanks with two days of beer, whiskey and chicken-fried-steak dinners. And Daryl was there when some young cop poured out most of a fifth and tossed the bottle on the ground, prompting Ed to say he didn’t appreciate littering.

  Early last year, some people, not cops, tracked Daryl down at the sobering center, where he had slept off a drunk 360 times in one calendar year. They were from a homeless outreach organization and they had some news, good for a change.

  The organization had just built a 75-unit residence for homeless chronic alcoholics at 1811 Eastlake Avenue, and was offering rooms to the frailest and costliest to the system, as determined by time spent in the sobering center, the emergency room and jail. The idea: provide them first with housing and meals, gain their trust, then encourage them to partake of the available services, including treatment for chemical dependency.

  No mandatory meetings or church-going. And one more thing, crucial to all: You can drink in this place.

  Welcome, Daryl. A month later: Welcome, Ed.

  “I damn near bawled,” Ed recalls.

  The $11 million project has endured the angry complaints of some that it uses public money to enable, even reward, chronic inebriates. And Bill Hobson, the director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center, has met that anger with some of his own.

  1811 Eastlake Avenue

  First, he says, the complaints reflect no understanding of the grip of alcoholism: Do you really think these men and women would rather live on the streets? Second, the cost to the public appears to have dropped as the number of visits to the emergency room, jail and the sobering center has plummeted.

  Finally, he asks, what kind of equation of humanity is this: Since you refuse to stop drinking, since you refuse to address your disease, you must die on the streets.

  “These guys have nothing going for them,” he says. “They could not be more dispossessed.” So, welcome. Pay a third of your disability income for rent, and remember to behave; this isn’t a party house.

  The handsome building at 1811 Eastlake stands on the shores of Interstate 5, a short walk from both the sobering center and a convenience store that sells cheap staples like cans of Icehouse and Midnight Special tobacco. Its first floor includes a laundry, a nurse’s office, counseling rooms and a bulletin board adorned with photos of smiling residents.

  Captured in those snapshot smiles, evidence of this life: missing teeth, ill-fitting clothes, faces disfigured by subdural hematomas—from beatings and falls to the pavement. Some residents snatch these photos to decorate their rooms, along with the cardboard signs they once used while panhandling.

  Above are three floors of studio apartments, including one for Daryl and one for Ed, both immaculately maintained. Daryl, 59 and with a left forefinger burned orange by tobacco, was July’s resident of the month. Ed, 61 and with a taste for western-style clothes, was August’s. The poster boys for visiting journalists, forever twinned, it seemed.

  Then something happened. On July 1, one day not blurred in memory, Ed felt he needed some nutrients, so he fixed himself a tomato beer: tomato juice and a can of Rainier. He took a sip, winced, took another sip, winced, and that was that. He hasn’t had a drink since.

  “It didn’t taste good anymore,” Ed says.

  Ed has been drinking ginger ale, and Daryl has been struggling. For a long while Daryl would not go to Ed’s apartment, with its coffee table and La-Z-Boy, and the occasional sound of a resident falling to the floor upstairs. He didn’t want to drink in front of Ed because he didn’t want to tempt his friend, and because, because—“I’m done trying,” he says, eyes tearing.

  The other day Daryl was back in Ed’s cozy apartment. Ed was drinking coffee he had just brewed, and Daryl was drinking a can of Rainier from that six-pack Ed never finished. They talked around old and fresh wars for a while, but it was clear that whatever Ed was looking at, Daryl could not yet see.

  EPILOGUE

  The daily routine at 1811 Eastlake Avenue remains the same. The program continues to demonstrate success in improving lives and saving public funds, with the model attracting the interest of communities across the country.

  Ed Myer
s has since moved, confident that he no longer needed the building’s services. His friend Daryl Jordan died in 2017 at the age of 68, leaving behind family members who say that Eastlake extended his life by many years.

  Bill Hobson, the longtime advocate for the homeless in Seattle who helped to establish the program, died in 2016; he was 76. In his honor, the street outside the Eastlake residence has been rechristened “Bill Hobson Way.”

  Amid Ruin of Flint, Seeing Hope in a Garden

  FLINT, MICH.—OCTOBER 19, 2009

  On one side of the fertile lot stands an abandoned house, stripped long ago for scrap. On the other side, another abandoned house, windows boarded, structure sagging. And diagonally across the street, two more abandoned houses, including one blackened by a fire maybe a year ago, maybe two.

  But on this lot, surrounded by desertion in the north end of Flint, the toughest city in America, collard greens sprout in verdant surprise. Although the broccoli and turnips and snap peas have been picked, it is best to wait until deep autumn for the greens, says the garden’s keeper, Harry Ryan. The frost lends sweetness to the leaves.

  His is not just another tiny community garden growing from a gap in the urban asphalt. This one lot is really 10 contiguous lots where a row of houses once stood. On this spot, the house burned down. (“I was the one who called the fire department.”) On that spot, the house was lost to back taxes. (“An older guy; he was trying to fix it up, and he was struggling.”)

  Garbage and chest-high overgrowth filled the domestic void of these lots on East Piper Avenue until four years ago, when Mr. Ryan decided one day: no. After receiving the proper permission, he began clearing the land.

  Rose Barber, 56, a neighbor who keeps a 30-inch Louisville Slugger, a Ryne Sandberg model, by her front door, offered her help. Then came Andre Jones, 40, another neighbor, using his shovel to do the backbreaking work of uncovering long stretches of sidewalk, which had disappeared under inches of soil, weeds and municipal neglect.