DRIVE onto the main drag of Orange Cove, just before it meanders into the High Sierra, and you're back in the San Joaquin Valley of California before air pollution and strip malls -- growers ruled, Mexicans picked crops and a good freeze could ruin everyone.

There's no supermarket, Motel 6 or Starbucks, not even a Pollo Loco. But there's one progressive trend in the valley that's caught on here: A new Latino political leadership bent on turning feudal farm towns into economically diverse, modern communities. It's evidence of a California that's becoming more politically representative of its people.

``Let me tell you, if it wasn't for the Latino mayors, a lot wouldn't be getting done in this valley,'' Orange Cove Mayor Victor Lopez told me. ``It's all about numbers, pure numbers, and the fact that we don't want to be farm workers picking fruit forever.''

While the San Joaquin Valley grew 23 percent in 10 years to 3.3 million people, its Latino population grew even faster to 1.3 million. Mix in dashes of voter registration and citizenship drives, sprinkle in some left-over Chicano power and the electoral system delivers: Spread among 60 cities, about 14 Latino mayors, 33 city council members, 51 elected school officials, four county supervisors, five state legislators and one lieutenant governor.

I had come to Orange Cove on a statewide tour, looking for the essence of Latino life in a changing California and a good bowl of the Mexican stew of hominy and tripe called menudo. You see, menudo is our chicken soup for the body and soul, our metaphor for bread-and-butter issues.

They serve a good bowl at CJ's restaurant on Park Boulevard.

``Mine is spicier, redder than most,'' said owner and cook Mary Castillo. ``All of the spices, like oregano, my mother brings them fresh from Mexico.''

Every shabby facade on Park Boulevard, including CJ's, will come down soon, replaced by Mission-style storefronts at $20,000 a pop. New water and power lines and sewers are already in place. A new senior center and middle school are on the way. The town's first high school may soon follow, as well as an auto parts plant, a nursery for growing flowers for China and a shopping center financed by comedian Paul Rodriguez, who grew up in Orange Cove.

All this started last year when Mayor Lopez and a Latino-majority city council won federal Rural Renewal Community status, allowing Orange Cove to attract new industry with special tax breaks.

``The future of this town depends on diversifying its economy,'' said Jim Gordon, Orange Cove's renewal manager. ``One good freeze would knock out the orange crop, and the farm workers would be out of work.''

While most towns desire economic progress, the Latino quest seems more personal, rooted in economic justice and a sense that their time has come.

The old agricultural guard is still alive, still against Chavez's United Farm Workers, but the fight's a lot more even now. Take what happened in Delano, just down Highway 99 from Orange Cove.

When Delano needed a new high school, grower Walter ``Bud'' Gamboni agreed to sell 55 acres with one condition: He'd get an extra $100,000 in damages if they gave the school a name that causes ``extreme embarrassment and emotional stress.'' Everybody knew who he meant.

Well, Gamboni got his money, and then he died before they broke ground on Cesar E. Chavez High School. I stopped there on the menudo tour. It's a wonderful sight.

What's unique to their Latino agenda? For one, proportional representation in local government. If the city is 90 percent, so should the police department. Once ignored farm worker issues such as unhealthy pesticide use and lack of decent housing are top priorities now.

Even so, much of their agenda is quite colorblind. That happens when you inherit air pollution, contaminated water, poor public transportation, suburban sprawl and other regional problems that require Latino and white-run towns to get along.

``We have our own agenda,'' Mayor Lopez said, ``but it's an agenda everyone can relate to. There's a realization now that we all have needs.''

In other words, there's menudo cooking in the American melting pot.