My Own Two Feet by Beverly Cleary Read Free Book Online

soaked to the skin, fall into the front seat. My galoshes were still dry in my closet in Portland, my shoes were soggy, and I did not care.
    And then the earthquake. One evening when I was studying, the old house began to quiver and then to shake and creak. My floor lamp swayed until I grabbed it. No one had told me what to do in an earthquake, so I sat tight, clutching my lamp, for the few seconds the earth took to calm itself.
    â€œBeverly, did you feel that?” Fred called out. I had indeed. Who could study after such an exciting experience? Books shoved aside, I wrote letters to my parents and to Claudine saying I hadjust survived an earthquake, a real earthquake, just like those we read about in the newspapers. Some years later, earthquakes began to shake up Oregonians, too, but in the 1930s Oregon was considered rock-solid. Only California shook.
    Earthquakes were not the only excitement provided by nature. As what passed for winter came to Southern California, Fred turned on the radio every evening at seven o’clock to listen to the frost warnings because he had an orange grove to protect. I had not understood the consequences of these warnings until late one afternoon when I looked out my bedroom window and saw over toward Pomona billows of black smoke. Alarmed, I ran downstairs to tell Verna, “There’s a big fire over by Pomona!”
    Verna assured me it was not a fire, that the temperature must have suddenly dropped to the point at which smudge pots had to be lit in that area so oily smoke would warm the groves and prevent the oranges from freezing. Those smudge pots affected our social life, I was soon to discover. One night at a school dance, the music stopped and someone announced that the temperature had dropped to the danger point. At this news, a number of young men left the gym to go out into the cold night, leaving their partners to share cars and get home as best they could.
    Smudging was dirty for everyone, but it was dangerous for the boys who worked all night to keep the pots filled with oil and who reported to class gray with fatigue and smoke they had not been able to scrub from their pores. Leaping flames casting shadows in the groves were a beautiful sight, hellishly beautiful for the young men who worked through the night and were sometimes badly burned trying to warm themselves by standing too close to the blazing pots in their oil-soaked clothes.
    Sometime in the winter, migratory workers from Mexico quietly appeared with ladders and clippers to snip navel oranges from the trees and drop them into canvas bags. Cull oranges, in those days before frozen orange juice, were spread through the groves for fertilizer, and for a few days, until the culls began to decay, Ontario was as fragrant as a vast kettle of marmalade.
    And then, in the spring, waxy blossoms burst forth from the orange trees, blossoms with perfume so sweet and so heavy that walking to school seemed dreamy and unreal. Smog had not yet come to Southern California. The skies were blue, and Ontario was an enchanted place.
    The enchantment of my new life began to fade when Mother Clapp left to visit a relative, and Verna’s mother, my great-aunt Elizabeth, whohad been staying with another daughter, came to take her place. Aunt Elizabeth had visited us in Portland, and it was her idea that I spend the winter with the Clapps and go to junior college. I had found her delightful—chatty, vivacious, full of fun, and fashion-conscious in a way I thought unusual for someone her age. I was grateful to her for Verna’s invitation and looked forward to seeing my tiny, lively great-aunt again.
    To my surprise and discomfort, Aunt Elizabeth began to criticize me, and I began to feel uncomfortable in her company. She set the table the way the family liked, she said. I did not understand. Mother Clapp had not complained, and neither had anyone else in the family. She said I took advantage of Verna. On this point, she may