VLVL2 (4) Erasing the past (still a Finesi romance)

[jbor]

on 1/9/03 8:03 AM, Mark Wright wrote:

> When I was a kid I spent a lot of time messing around in swamps, ponds
> and lakes. Sometimes I caught crawfish. It was *fun*, really and
> truely, and P presents it as such for Moonpie's children. There was
> certainly a great deal of genuine physical labor on what seems to have
> been a genuine farm (cattle-grates at the gate and everything) that the
> grups are doing. The kids are supplementing the petty cash is all. Come
> to think of it, my Dad grew up on a farm in the 30's and 40's, and
> there was plenty of work on their modest dairy farm to go around for
> parents, children, and hired-hands. Moonpie's kids are on a lark by
> comparison --- you might think of them as actually buying the right to
> play around in the creek with their harvest of mudbugs. It's a good
> deal for them.
> 
> Working in a fast-food joint isnt' so bad either; I worked in one when
> I was Prairie's age, earning just enough money to keep me in LP's and
> gasoline.

I agree, and I don't think there's any suggestion that RC and Moonpie or
Baba Havabananda are breaching the child labour laws. But the way the text
describes it is interesting:

      RC and Moonpie ... were as happy to see the money as the kids
    were to be out doing the work. (35.25)

It's the phrasing of it, the way the parents are interested in the money,
which implies that they're not totally non-materialistic as you might
expect, and the way "money" is equated to "work". It's another little hint
that everything's not quite as it seems.

best