“It’s mighty fine to live in California, where there is warm weather all the time and a chance to raise green stuff all the year around, but California hasn’t anything on eastern North Carolina,” declares Mrs. E.G. Bigelow of La Jolla, California, who arrived in this city last Saturday for a six weeks visit to relatrives and friends.
“And the mountain scenery of California is no finer or more p leasing to the eye than the mountains of western Virginia,” says Mrs. Bigelow who lives six blocks away from the foot of a mountain in southern California, and one block from the surf of the Pacific Ocean.
Mrs. Bigelow is formerly Miss Mary McMullan, daughter of Mrs. Mary McMullan of Pennsylvania Avenue, this city. She has been living in the west for 11 years, but makes a biennial visit to her old home town. Her husband is in the automobile business in the West.
Mrs. Bigelow’s account of southern California is very interesting to an easterner. Out there the farmers do without rain for as long as six months a year, being obliged to water their crops by irrigation, in direct contrast to Pasquotank farmers who have to provide drainage. Everything that will grow is grown there, and the housewife can have green vegetables for her table every day in the year.
The labor question is impossible of solution. Most of the farming is done by Japs, who are making much money and acquiring title to much property. Ordinary negro domestic labor gets $100 a month or mor and, the skilled male labor get fabulous prices. Plasterers made up to $25 a day, and carpenters $10 to $15 a day. Of course, all classes of labor do not make so much money, especially the semi-skilled class, for the section is over run with people in search of health, who are willing to work for their board. Even the driver of the laundry wagon serving Mrs. Bigelow’s home is a highly educated man who went to California for his health. Groceries cost very little more than in this part of the country, but clothing is considerably higher in price, as most of it is manufactured on this side of America and is shipped across the continent.
The oranges raised in that locality are not as fine as the oranges of Florida, she says. In her own garden she raised lemons for the use of her own family. Life is very interesting out there, and there are lots of people coming and going, who keep it from growing monotonous, but southern California can never quite supplant the place of eastern North Carolina in the heart of one who has been born and reared (words obscured) to Mrs. Bigelow.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, June 22, 1923
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