Judy's Journey Read Online Free PDF

there’s much green grass for ’em to eat, pore things. That un we come nigh hittin’ was so skinny, you could hang your hat on her hip-bone, it stuck out so fur.”
    Judy laughed. “Papa …” she began. “Papa …”
    â€œWhat is it, sugarpie?” asked Papa.
    â€œThought you said it would be summer in Florida,” Judy went on. “The grass ain’t green nor nothin’.”
    â€œJust you wait, honey!” Papa promised. “Where we’re goin’, it’ll be summer all year round.”
    Pine trees, their trunks close together like a million standing toothpicks, with palmetto thickets at their base, lined the roadside for hours. But at last there was a change. It was Judy who saw the first orange tree.
    â€œLooky! Looky! Oranges growing on trees !” she cried.
    â€œMama, I want one to suck,” said Joe Bob.
    â€œMe too,” said Cora Jane.
    â€œWhat! You-all think it’s settling time?” asked Judy
    Judy had not forgotten settlement time. The family always went to town when the cotton crop was sold. Even when the crop wasn’t very good, it was a time to celebrate with something good to eat—maybe a few oranges to suck. When the crop was good and there was some cash money left over, it meant new clothes for everybody. Once, long ago, Mama got her sewing-machine and another time the iron bed—but Papa never got his new wagon. Judy remembered how few oranges there had been in the little house in the cotton field.
    â€œLet’s stop and pick and suck,” begged Joe Bob.
    Orange groves with their rich dark glistening leaves and golden balls of fruit lined the road now for miles, with the occasional break of a stretch of pine woods or a clear blue lake. The grass began to grow greener and the sky bluer. It began to feel more like summer. The children threw off their ragged coats and their bare legs were no longer cold.
    All of a sudden the car began a queer knocking sound and Papa had to stop. He stopped by an orange grove and there on the ground lay ever so many good ripe oranges. While Papa got out his tools and fixed the engine and Mama tended Lonnie, the children ran into the grove and picked up oranges.
    That night they had oranges for supper. The food they had brought from Alabama was all gone but a little flour and cornmeal. They sat on the grassy bank and sucked oranges—more oranges than they had ever had in their lives before. Mama squeezed some juice in a cup and offered it to the baby. It was Lonnie’s first taste—and he spat it out. He did not like it.
    â€œLet’s find us a lake to camp by,” said Papa when the engine was fixed.
    â€œA lake all our own,” added Judy.
    They left the main road and turned off on a network of sandy side roads. Papa always liked to explore. They passed farmhouses with wide verandahs and shade trees clustered close. The houses had house plants growing in large tin buckets on the verandahs, and one had a front yard full of blooming flowers.
    â€œLooky!” cried Judy. “Flowers! It is summer! Summer in January!” She squeezed Papa’s arm. “It’s summer jest like you said it would be, Papa.”
    â€œShore!” answered Papa, smiling.

CHAPTER III
The Little Lake
    T HE LAKE WAS BEAUTIFUL. It was a perfect circle. The water was so clear and blue and glistening, they could see the fish swimming many feet below. All the Drummonds got out of the Ford and looked at it. All but Mama. She laid the sleeping Lonnie on the rose carpet on the front seat, took a carton from the back of the car and handed out soap.
    â€œYou’re all as dirty as pigs,” she said. “Git in that water and wash yourselves.”
    Judy remembered the muddy creek down below the cotton field where they used to wash in the summertime. Now they had a whole lakeful of clear, clean water and it was not cold at all.
    Papa had driven the jalopy to the far