Judy's Journey by Lois Lenski

Author:Lois Lenski [Lenski, Lois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2749-7
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

Oleander

“PAPA,” SAID JUDY, “ARE we goin’ to git us a farm?”

“With a cow and a mule and a dog and a cat?” asked Joe Bob.

“Not jest yet,” said Papa, laughing. “We gotta make more money first.”

“Where we goin’ this time?” asked Cora Jane.

“Up north,” answered Papa.

Papa was gay again, now that they had started going somewhere. He seemed more like himself than he had for a long time. It was April—real summer weather in Florida, but not yet too warm. Papa had decided to leave Bean Town before the end of the bean harvest, when all the other workers would be leaving.

“We’ll be like the redbirds and bluebirds and robins,” said Papa. “We’ll go up north for the summer. They say it gits so all-fired hot down here nobody can stand it. And there’s no work, so the Negroes go north by big truckloads. They follow potato and other vegetable crops along the Atlantic seaboard. All the big Florida vegetable fields are flooded by summer rains. The growers have to pump the water off and drain the land, before they can begin planting again in September.”

“Will we come back to Florida next winter?” asked Joe Bob.

“Depends on what we find up north,” said Papa.

“Are we going up north?” cried Judy.

Up north was a far away and very mysterious place, but it had somehow changed character. It was not so much the home of Yankees who had burned your great-grandmother’s house and stolen her silver, but of strange people who consumed tons of oranges, beans, celery and other vegetables.

“Will we git us a farm up north, Papa?” asked Judy.

“Law, no,” said Papa, “but I hope I’ll git some of that Yankee money in my pocket.”

“I never went to Gloria Rathbone’s party, after all,” said Judy.

“Why not?” demanded Joe Bob. “You promised to bring me somethin’.”

Judy bristled. “That mean little ole Gloria called me names,” she explained. “Said nobody couldn’t come to her party who wasn’t invited. I never even saw the house she lives in. Didn’t want to see her wonderful ole house neither.”

“I call that a low-down Yankee trick,” growled Papa.

“She’s a Yankee all right, Bessie Harmon said so,” Judy went on. “Just because her father owns a bean house, she thinks she’s smart. But I had to help her with her multiplication table and her spelling. She wore a silk dress and had new patent-leather shoes too.”

“Bet your new dress was prettier than hers, honey,” said Papa.

“Nobody looked at it,” mourned Judy. After a pause she added, “I never did see Lake Okeechobee once. I never went up on the dike.”

“And I never caught nothin’ but catfish in that little ole dirty canal,” said Joe Bob.

It was good to leave the flat, level sawgrass and elderberry land of the Glades and the unending miles of vegetable fields. It was good to get away from the great treeless stretches of muck and swamp. Soon there were shiny-leaved citrus groves again and towns with shady streets to rest the eyes from the sun.

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