Lean Times in Los Angeles

The lean days, blue skies with never a cloud, a sea of blue day after day, the sun floating though it. The days of plenty--plenty of worries, plenty of oranges. Eat them in bed, eat them for lunch, push them down for dinner. Oranges, five cents a dozen. Sunshine in the sky, sun juice in my stomach.

Excerpt from John Fante's classic 1939 novel, Ask the Dust