(6 of 8)
Leisure time? "The 30-hour work week will not come. People will enter the labor market later and later as education grows. And they may retire earlier, but they will continue to take their benefits in the form of money rather than a shorter week."
Marijuana? "It will be legalized. It has to be, once Nixon reduces the penalty. Without the motivation of a stiff penalty, the law becomes impossible to enforce, like a law against scratching your nose in your own house."
Religion? "A whole new religious movement is beginning. We will see the further decline of organized Protestant denominations; more and more Eastern-religious and pseudoreligious movements will take hold."
I leave, located somewhere in the future, and when my feet meet the pavement outside, I return to the present with a jarring thud. I make the adjustment in a microsecond. California is billed as a now scene. But the fact is, everyone living here has one foot in now and another in tomorrow. Here, you get the feeling, is the authentic international dateline. Here the future begins. As I walk away from Rand, the prospect seems kind of pleasing after all.
Cut to: Farmland Southeast of San Francisco
The old Victorian farmhouse is a wreck. It is bare wood now, so you can hardly tell it was ever painted. The yard is all high weeds, covered with dog droppings, buzzing with flies. A radio plays through the broken screen door. I can't raise anybody so I go around back, where I find Bill McCorry and Bill McCorry Jr., the owners. The old man wears a cowboy hat and boots, the son has a flattop and cowboy boots, but a city shirt. I ask the son how he's making out.
"Oh, we're gettin' by. We got 5,000 acres here, some rented, some owned. We got 300 heada Hereford, and some hogs. We raise a little barley. Dad an' me do most of the work, but we got two men who help us part time." One of the ranch hands materializes at his side like a movie extra and sharpens his knife on a pocket stone. It is 100° in the yard. "There's not much money in ranchin' around here," continues McCorry. "One trouble is the rain. In a year we don't get but ten, eleven inches. We get a lot of fires. A fire last year burned 9,000 acres around here. But we get green grass in November; it lasts till spring."
"What I like about ranchin' is you're not workin' with the public; you're not all boxed in, crowded in. An' listen, we have some fun. My wife and I go to Vegas every year. You get hooked on farmin', really. I'm the third generation on this farm; my grandfather came here from Ireland in 1882 —he had a family of ten. You know, I'd hate to see even one field sold away from the ranch."
Cut to: Downtown San Jose