Source: LA Times
SAN BENITO COUNTY, Calif. — In case it wasn’t obvious on the two-lane highway that carves through golden hills, cow pastures and rows of grapevines, a sign inside the roadside Paicines General Store makes the point clear: “Welcome to the country.”
When Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas was a boy in the 1980s, his grandmother would walk him and his brother to the store for ice cream before heading to her night shift at a local cannery.
“I remember coming here often, and not much has changed,” Rivas said during a recent stop inside, surrounded by racks of cowboy hats, rodeo posters and a bulletin board pinned with business cards for horseshoers and beekeepers.