Abstract

Long Beach, California: Farmer's Rest

This article presents the author's views on the life of farmers along the Long Beach, California. The men are engaged with mouthfuls of plug and scrap, the women with "wax." Talk rears up sturdily, without apology. It is strong and brittle like the cornstalks of Iowa, and cast in the slow, rasping cadence of the Middle West. The "Pike" is the midway of this transplanted cornfleld; alive with a fluttering contingent of youth on a holiday. Youth is forever making holiday in Long Beach and age, getting a later start, is trying heroically and rather pathetically to follow. So there are many wheel-chairs rolling along the Pike. They are not the wheel-chairs of Atlantic City in which the able-bodied ride at slothful ease. The able-bodied youth of Long Beach would scorn such relaxation of their sturdy limbs.