The hops were queer and interesting, unlike any other crops Rose-Ellen had met with. The leaves were deep-lobed, shaped a little like woodbine, but rough to touch. The fruits resembled small spruce cones of pale yellow-green tissue paper. The vines were trained on wires strung along ten-foot poles; they formed aisles that were heavy with drowsy fragrance.
The picking baskets stood almost as high as Rose-Ellen's shoulder, and she and Dick were proud of filling one apiece, the first day they worked. These baskets held sixty pounds each--more when the weather was not so dry--and sixty pounds meant ninety cents. School had not started yet, so the children worked all day. Sometimes Rose-Ellen could not keep from crying, she was so tired. And when she cried, Grandma's mouth worked over her store teeth in the way that meant she felt bad.
"But we've got to get in under it, all of us," she scolded, to keep from crying herself. "We've got to earn what we can. I never see the beat of it. If we scrabble as hard as we can, we just only keep from sliding backwards."
Here in the hopyards the Beechams did not get their pay in money. They were given tickets marked with the amount due them. These they could use for money at the company store.
"And the prices there are sky-high!" Grandma wrathfully told Grandpa, waving a pound of coffee before his eyes. "Thirty-five cents, and not the best grade, mind you! Pink salmon higher than red ought to be. Bread fifteen cents a loaf! Milk sky-high and Carrie plumb dry!"
The living quarters were bad, too: shacks, with free straw on the floor for beds, and mud deep in the dooryards where the campers emptied water. Over it all hung a sick smell of garbage and a cloud of flies.
It was no wonder that scores of children and some older people were sick. 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. Back in asparagus I send-it my kids to the Center, and what you think? They take off Pepe's clothes! They say it is not healthy that she wear the swaddlings. I tell Angelina to say to them that my madre before me was dressed so; but again they strip the poor angel."
"And what did you do then?" Rose-Ellen inquired.
"No more did I send-it my kids to the Center!" Mrs. Serafini cried dramatically.