Six carloads of ruined lettuce

February 1915. Lee, having given up the bookstore, furnishes a home for himself for the first time and spends Adam's money on a gas stove, electric light, a telephone and a big icebox. Adam, shucked out of his shell, buys a victrola and joins the Masons, then fastens on a single idea: a mastodon dug fresh out of Siberian ice, and lettuce chopped in ice keeping three weeks. Will Hamilton, invited to advise, loses his temper — he comes from a family that had ideas instead of breakfast — tells Adam to kick dust over it, and recommends beans against the coming war. Adam buys the ice plant anyway. Late in the year six carloads of lettuce leave Salinas with the Chamber of Commerce in attendance; a snow slide, unseasonable warmth and a confusion of orders turn them into slop with a disposal charge. Adam is left with nine thousand dollars and refuses to crawl back into his hole. The twins become Aron and Cal Lettuce, and Aron, humiliated, says he hates his father.

Will's outburst is the centre: a lifetime of resentment at Hamilton dreaming, delivered as sound advice that turns out to be right, and immediately ashamed of itself. The failure is dealt out as pure accident, so nobody in the book can be blamed and everybody blames Adam anyway. What the ruin buys is Aron's licence to hate his father, arriving disguised as embarrassment at a nickname.