"But we can't blame Farmer Lukes," said Grandpa. "With all the planting and digging and hauling he's done, he says he hasn't a cent to show for it, once he's paid for his seed. It's too deep for me."
Down across Colorado, where the names were Spanish, Daddy said, because it used to be part of Mexico. Down across New Mexico, where the air smelled of cedar; where scattered adobe houses had bright blue doors and strings of scarlet chili peppers fringing their roofs; where Indians sat under brush shelters by the highway and held up pottery for sale. Down into Arizona, where Grandma had to admit that the colors she'd seen on the picture postcards of it were not too bright. Here were red rocks, pink, blue-gray, white, yellow, purple; and the morning and evening sun set their colors afire and made them flower gardens of flame. Here the Indian women wore flounced skirts and velvet tunics and silver jewelry. They herded flocks of sheep and goats and lived in houses like inverted brown bowls.
"We've had worse homes, this year," Grandma said. "I'd never hold up my head if they knew back home." Along the road with the Reo ran an endless parade of old cars and trailers. There were snub-nosed Model T's, packed till they bulged; monstrous Packards with doors tied shut; yellow roadsters that had been smart ten years ago, jolting along with mattresses on their tops and young families jammed into their luggage compartments. Once in a while they met another goat, like Carrie, who wasn't giving as much milk as before.
"All this great country," Grandma marveled some more, "and no room for these folks. Half a million of us, some say, without a place to go."
Dick said, "The kid in that Oklahoma car said the drought dried up their farm and the wind blew it away. Nothing will grow in the ground that's left."
"He's from the Dust Bowl," Grandpa assented. "Thousands of these folks are from the Dust Bowl."
The parade of old cars limped along for two weeks, growing thicker as it drew near the part of Arizona where the pickers had been called for. The Beechams saw more and more signs on fences and poles: FIVE HUNDRED PICKERS WANTED!
"They don't say how much they pay," Grandma noticed.
"Ninety cents a hundred pounds is usual this year, and a fellow can make a bare living at that," said Daddy.
Soon the procession turned off the road, the Beechams with it. The place was swarming with pickers.