United States or Comoros ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We ain't got the sabe, or the knack, or something or other. Just look at this piece of ground four crops a year, an' every inch of soil workin' over time. Why, back in town there, there's single acres that earns more than fifty of ours in the old days. The Porchugeeze is natural-born farmers, that's all, an' we don't know nothin' about farmin' an' never did."
"Not in the country, maybe," Saxon controverted. "But I've seen an awful lot of Americans living like pigs in the cities." Billy grunted unwilling assent. "I guess they quit the farms an' go to the city for something better, an' get it in the neck." "Look at all the children!" Saxon cried. "School's letting out. And nearly all are Portuguese, Billy, NOT Porchugeeze.
"Huh! That's easy. The old geezer's like his orchard covered with moss. It's plain as the nose on your face, after San Leandro, that he don't know the first thing. An' them horses. It'd be a charity to him, an' a savin' of money for him, to take 'em out an' shoot 'em both. You bet you don't see the Porchugeeze with horses like them.
"But what makes it that high? Town lots?" Saxon wanted to know. "Nope. The Porchugeeze make it that high, I guess." "I thought it was pretty good land that fetched a hundred an acre," Billy said. "Oh, them times is past. They used to give away land once, an' if you was good, throw in all the cattle runnin' on it." "How about government land around here?" was Billy'a next query.
Look along all the rows. Every tree's that way. See? An' that's just one trick of the Porchugeeze. They got a million like it. They don't need props when the crop's heavy. Why, when we had a heavy crop, we used to use five props to a tree. Now take ten acres of trees. That'd be some several thousan' props. Which cost money, an' labor to put in an' take out every year.
"Them San Leandro Porchugeeze ain't got nothin' on us when it comes to intensive farmin'. Look at that water runnin'. You know, it seems so good to me that sometimes I just wanta get down on hands an' knees an' lap it all up myself." "Oh, to have all the water you want in a climate like this!" Saxon exclaimed. "An' don't be scared of it ever goin' back on you.
"It looks like the free-born American ain't got no room left in his own land." "Then it's his own fault," Saxon said, with vague asperity, resenting conditions she was just beginning to grasp. "Oh, I don't know about that. I reckon the American could do what the Porchugeeze do if he wanted to. Only he don't want to, thank God. He ain't much given to livin' like a pig often leavin's."
"When I get this place, there'll be a gate here," he announced. "Pay for itself in no time. It's the thousan' an' one little things like this that count up big when you put 'm together." He sighed contentedly. "I never used to think about such things, but when we shook Oakland I began to wise up. It was them San Leandro Porchugeeze that gave me my first eye-opener. I'd been asleep, before that."
Besides, we want to know all about all kinds of land, close to the big cities as well as back in the mountains." "Gee! this must be the Porchugeeze headquarters," was Billy's reiterated comment, as they walked through San Leandro. "It looks as though they'd crowd our kind out," Saxon adjudged. "Some tall crowdin', I guess," Billy grumbled.
He died with it stuck up, an' with more mortgages on the land he had left than you could shake a stick at. Plantin' tomatoes wrapped up in wrappin' paper ever heard of that? Father snorted when he first seen the Porchugeeze doin' it. An' he went on snortin'. Just the same they got bumper crops, an' father's house-patch of tomatoes was eaten by the black beetles.
Word Of The Day