Grandpa said it put him in mind of heaven.
Grandma said it would be heaven-on-earth to live there, if only
you had a decent little house and a garden. The desert places
were as beautiful, abloom with many-colored wildflowers; and
there were fields of artichokes and other vegetables, with
Chinese and Japanese tending them. Those clean green rows
stretched on endlessly.
"They make me feel funny," Rose-Ellen complained, "like seeing
too many folks and too many stars."
"They've got so many vegetables they dump them into the sea,
because if they put them all on the market, the price would go
down. But there's not enough so that those that pick them get
what they need to eat," said Grandpa. "Sometimes too much is not
enough."
The lettuce camp housed part of its workers in a huge old barn.
The Beechams had three stalls and used their tent for curtains.
They cooked out in the barnyard, so it was fortunate that it was
the dry season. From May to August the men and Dick picked,
trimmed, packed lettuce; but during most of that time the
barn-apartment was in quarantine. All the children who had not
had scarlet fever came down with it.
It was even hotter than midsummer Philadelphia, and the air was
sticky, and black with flies besides, and sickening with odor.
Grandma's cushiony pinkness entirely disappeared; she was more
the color of a paper-bag, Rose-Ellen thought.
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