"Not me!" bragged Joe. "Other kids does." The beet tops fell
away under his flashing knife.

From the beet-dump the beets were taken to the sugar factory a
few miles away, where they were made into shining white beet
sugar. ("And that's another thing I never even guessed!" thought
Rose-Ellen. "What hard work it takes to fill our sugar bowls!")

Sometimes at night now a skim of ice formed on the water bucket
in the chicken-house. Goldenrod and asters were puffs of white;
the harvest moon shone big and red at the skyline, across miles
of rolling farmland; crickets fiddled sleepily and long-tailed
magpies chattered. One clear, frosty night Grandpa said, "Hark!
the ducks are flying south. Maybe we best follow."




7: THE BOY WHO DIDN'T KNOW GOD

Handbills blew around the adobe village, announcing that five
hundred cotton-pickers were wanted at once in Arizona. The Reo,
full of Beechams and trailing Carrie, headed south.

The surprisingly large grocery bill had been paid, a few clothes
bought, Daddy's ulcerated tooth pulled, and the Reo's patched
tires replaced with better used ones. The result was that the
Beecham pocketbooks were as flat as pancakes.

"Yet we've worked like horses," Daddy said heavily. "And, worse