The Well Appointed Site Office

The scene of wanton miniature building crushing in The Case of the Golden Oranges took place in this trailer that was being used as a subdivision construction site office.

On the outside it looks like any other trailer of it's type being put to this use, but on the inside it seems rather well appointed.

It's got faux wood panelling, curtains on the windows, a selection of hardcover books on the shelf - not to mention pottery - as well as very decent furniture. I guess this is for the benefit of potential buyers and well-heeled investors. Or maybe it's just product placement. Or maybe the set dressers used whatever they had on hand.

And as you can see from this and the previous photo, there was more than one miniature house - or 'little trinket' as the characters called them - scattered around. It looks like there are 2 on the drafting table, 1 on the desk by the woman, and another in the foreground by the man's elbow.

The fictional development was called Sunrise Hills, and you can see the Modern Homes it offers start at $22,500, with no down payment. That was in the spring of 1963 in an equally fictional, although likely close to reality, soon to be ex orange grove in the outskirts of Los Angeles. My parents first home, in 1957 in a then non-fictional, far-flung hinterland of Toronto, clocked in at $16,025. 

(If you're wondering about the differences between US and Canadian currency in that era, Wikipedia has this to say: ... Canada allowed its dollar to float in 1950, whereupon the currency rose to a slight premium over the U.S. dollar for the next decade. But the Canadian dollar fell sharply after 1960 before it was again pegged in 1962 at C$1.00 = US$0.925....This peg lasted until 1970, after which the currency's value has floated).