Narrative Lab
The Count on Main Street
Produced by Narrative Lab · Idea by Baptiste
During a busy agricultural season in 1928, Blair Fuller, a fictional San Francisco motorcycle traveler, stops in Locke to rest and make a quick travel note. He mistakes the people gathered around Main Street for the town’s permanent population and assumes the street itself is where most work happens. Mei Lin, a market clerk at Yuen Chong Market, challenges him to stay long enough to see the town’s changing rhythm. Across one day, Blair learns that Locke’s roughly 600 permanent residents lived within a much larger seasonal world of farm laborers, boarders, merchants, service workers, families, and visitors—and that Main Street’s commerce depended on labor performed elsewhere in the Delta.
Begin Chapter 1