Most families are dependent on citrus for their livelihood, either picking fruit or boxing it in the seven area packinghouses. When the crop's good, people have enough money to pay bills, patronize the town's remaining businesses and drive to bigger places to shop for things unavailable in their community. But when the temperature plummets below freezing and stays there for hours, as it did last winter, most of Orange Cove's 8,000 residents are in trouble. No crop means no work, which means no money to spend in town or anywhere else. Bills go unpaid.
Credit runs out.
Locally owned businesses close, some forever. Orange Cove's been on that ag-fueled roller coaster ride for decades. But in the heart of Orange Cove's small, vacancy-dotted business district along Park Boulevard, where Spanish is more commonly spoken than English, Retha Leonard disagrees with Rivera's rosy forecast. Leonard remembers when Orange Cove residents could go to the movies, fill prescriptions at a pharmacy, buy shoes, get their clothes cleaned and visit a doctor without leaving town. Freezes like last winter's and the one in 1990 clobber Orange Cove.