Stay in Florida

Stay in Florida

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Here is a picture of Miguel. He works at Carter's and gets ice for the water jugs for the crews as they go out as well as many other tasks around there like mowing the lawn, cleaning up etc.. I also wanted to take a picture of Frank (a retired fruit picker who lives in his van and is the other member of our early morning gang) but he didn't want me to. Roger often notes that grove owners pay as little as they can to get the fruit picked (they pay what they need to in order to get a crew to do it) and that fruit picking pays less with all the 'Amigos' (or immigrants). That raises several interesting questions. Is the problem that Americans won't pick fruit or that farmers don't pay enough? Should American farmers be saddled with exorbitant costs to have their fruit picked in this global economy and be put at a disadvantage to their competitors (in Argentina and Mexico for example) who pay even less?
Would an extra half cent per grapefruit or fifth cent per orange really make that much difference in the final price? What right do I as an American have to demand higher wages just because I was lucky enough to be born an American? Just what is necessary to preserve the effective (and desirable) American society? What is the best way to really help those who have less advantages than yourself? Lots of interesting questions; no easy answers, though.... Today (Nov 16) I took the day off to check on my mail (still lost for 17 days, who is to know where it is) and say goodbye to the folks at the office of Circle H Citrus. Here is Jan in a posed picture in the 'Crew Registration' trailer. He and Rosa did the employment paperwork for most of Louis' crew on my first day.
As I was checking on my mail I passed one of the numerous citrus processing plants in Fort Pierce. Here are rows of 'juice orange' trailers in the trailer parking lot of the Tropicana plant. In the background is one of two really massive white buildings. Could those be refrigerated areas for the year's juice? Heat loss is based on the surface area which increases with the square of the size while volume increases with the cube of the size. That means really huge refrigerated areas are most efficient. Who is to know for sure?
Here are a couple of trailers being unloaded. They tilt the whole tractor trailer combination up and the fruit rolls out the back. Wow!
Here is another view of the processing plant. One of the positions I was offered at the One Stop office was in just such a plant. Cool! Will there be time to come back and work there, too? Only time (as Inya well knows) will tell. This will probably be my last chance to use the internet before I get back to Dallas. I expect to leave the morning of the 18th and take US 98 to Pensacola, FL. Then US 90 to Beaumont Texas and US 69 to US 175 to Dallas. I expect to take lots of pictures until then.