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Updated: May 4, 2025
The Bossiers and Beechams were congenial spirits in every way they lived in the one sphere and held the one set of ideas, the only difference between them, and that an unnoticeable one, being that the Bossiers, though in comfortable circumstances, were not at all rich, while Harold Beecham was immensely wealthy.
One day the Beechams were picking; the next day they had joined with two other families and hired a truck to take them and their belongings to Oystershell, on the inlet of the bay near by. Pauline Isabel's family were going to a Negro oystershucking village almost in sight of Oystershell. "It's sure nice there!" Pauline assured them happily.
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.
It was right enough to be unearthed as Miss Melvyn, grand-daughter of Mrs Bossier of Caddagat, and great friend and intimate of the swell Beechams of Five-Bob Downs station. At Goulburn I was only the daughter of old Dick Melvyn, broken-down farmer-cockatoo, well known by reason of his sprees about the commonest pubs in town.
Handbills blew around the adobe village, announcing that five hundred cotton-pickers were wanted at once in Arizona. The Reo, full of Beechams and trailing Carrie, headed south. The surprisingly large grocery bill had been paid, a few clothes bought, Daddy's ulcerated tooth pulled, and the Reo's patched tires replaced with better used ones.
And the Reo groaned and puffed. Up through Colorado they chugged; past Pike's Peak; through Denver, flat on the plain with a blue mountain wall to its west; on through the farmlands north of it to the sugar-beet town which was their goal. Beyond the town stood an adobe village for beetworkers on the Lukes fields, where the Beechams were to work.
"I'm learning to do spatter prints for Christmas," said Rose-Ellen, brushing her hair before going to bed. "Jimmie, why on earth don't you take this chance to learn reading?" Daddy coaxed. "Daddy, you won't tell Her I can't read?" Jimmie begged. Yet, as October passed, something happened to change Jimmie's mind. As October passed, too, the Beechams grew skillful at picking.
He was a big, kind-looking old man, his gray hair waving round a bald dome, his eyes bright blue. He was looking at a newspaper. It was a crumpled old paper that had been wrapped around someone's shoes; the Beechams didn't spend pennies for newspapers nowadays. The long brushes were quiet from their whirling.
The public health nurses, when they came to visit the sick ones, warned the women to cover food and garbage, but most of the women laughed at the advice. "Those doctor always tell us things," the Beechams' Italian neighbor, Mrs. Serafini, said lightly. She was dandling a sad baby while the sad baby sucked a disk of salami, heavy with spices. "And those nurse also are crazy.
Grandma said, "If the bog was bad for my rheumatiz, what's this going to be?" A man showed the Beechams a vacant house in the long rows. "Not much to look at," he acknowledged, "but the rent ain't much, either. The roofs are tight and a few have running water, case you want it bad enough to pay extra." "To think a rusty pipe and one faucet in my kitchen would ever be a luxury!" Grandma muttered.
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