"And they aren't done with when they're picked, even," added Daddy. "Most of them will be canned; and other folks have to shell and sort them and put them into cans and then cook them and seal and label the cans."
"What an awful lot of work everything makes," Dick exclaimed.
"It was different in my Gramma's time." Grandma pursed her lips as she set a white patch in a blue overall knee. "Then each family grew and canned and made almost everything it used."
"Now everybody's linked up with everybody else," agreed Grandpa, cobbling a shoe with his little kit. "We use' to get along in winter with turnips and cabbage and such, and fruit the womenfolks canned. Of course it's pretty nice to have garden vegetables and fruit fresh the year round, but. . . ."
Grandma squinted suddenly over her spectacles. "For the land's sakes! I never thought of it, but it's turned the country upside down and made a million people into 'rubber tramps'--this having to have fresh green stuff in winter."
"The owners couldn't handle their crops without the million workers coming in just when they're ready to harvest," Daddy continued the tale. . . .
"But they haven't anything for us to do the rest of the time; and how they do hate the sight of us 'rubber tramps,' the minute we've finished doing their work for them," Dick ended.
Next morning they started up the coast to pick lettuce. The country was beautiful. Rounded hills, soft looking and of the brightest green, ran down toward the sea, with really white sheep pastured on them. 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."