She disappeared behind a door and emerged five minutes later pushing a dolly bearing two medium-sized cardboard boxes.

"You're in luck," she said. "It was a weekly, and a small one, so this is twenty years. You can't take it out of the room, but we're open till six. Happy reading."

No raised eyebrows, no intrusive questions. God bless librarians. I wheeled the dolly to a table.

A small one, indeed. The Intelligencer was a seven-page green sheet and the second carton was half empty. Copies, beginning with January 1962, were bound by the dozen and bagged in plastic. The publisher and editor-in-chief was someone named Orton Hatzler, the managing editor Wanda Hatzler. I copied down both names and started to read.

Wide-spaced text and a few photos with surprisingly good clarity. Weather reports on the front page, because even in California weather mattered to farmers. High school dances, bumper crops, science projects, 4-H Club, scouting expeditions, gleeful descriptions of the Kern County Fair ("Once again, Lars Carlson has shown himself to be the peach-pie-eating champion of all time!"). Page two was much the same, and three was reserved for wire-service snips abstracting the international events of the day and for editorials. Orton Hatzler had been a strong hawk on Vietnam.

Butch Ardullo's name cropped up frequently, mostly in stories related to his leadership in the farm organization. A photo of him and his wife at a Fresno charity ball showed a big man with a bulldog face and a gray crew cut hovering over a willowy, refined-looking, dark-haired woman. Luck-of-the-draw genetics had favored Scott with his father's build and his mother's facial features.

Scott had inherited athletic skills, as well. The first time I found his name was under one of those football-hero group shots-players selected for the Kern County all-star game kneeling and beaming in front of a goalpost. Scott had played halfback forTehachapi High, acquitted himself honorably.

No pictures of Terri Ardullo, which made sense. She wasn't aTreadway native, had grown up in Modesto.

Carson Crimmins's name showed up regularly, too. The other rich man in town. From what I could make out, Crimmins had started out as Butch Ardullo's ally in the fight for the family farm, but had switched course by the early seventies, expressing his frustration with low walnut prices and the rising cost of doing business, and advertising his willingness to sell "to the highest serious bidder."

No pictures of him. No comments from Butch Ardullo. The Intelligencer avoided taking sides.

March 1969. An entire issue devoted to Katherine Stethson Ardullo's funeral. References to a "lingering illness," and to the hiking death, years before, of the oldest son, Henry Junior. The article was augmented by old family snapshots and pictures of Butch and Scott at graveside, heads hung low.

August 10, 1974. Orton Hatzler mourned Nixon's resignation.