～ば良い方だった meaning in this sentence from IAIJ

Question

I'm stuck with this sentence (from An Integrated Approach To Intermediate Japanese):

その頃、私は金がなく、昼の中華料理で、三十セントと三十五セントの定食のうち、せいぜい月に一度か二度、高いのにありつければ良い方だった。

My attempted (literal) translation is the following:

At that time I didn't have money (and), at the chinese food lunch, between a 30 cents or 35 cents fixed price lunch, at most once or twice a month, it would have been the right choice if I managed to eat expensive things.

I translated the のうち as equivalent to の中 (I think it is correct in this case). What I'm struggling with is the 高いのにありつければ良い方だった part. My current understanding of that portion is that "～にありつく" means "to get/eat with difficulty" so "高いのにありつければ" means something like "If I manage to eat something expensive..." since I'm treating "高いの" as "高いこと" and ありつければ is the conditional form of the potential form of ありつく. Finally I translated "良い方だった" as "It was the right way/thing to do".

I think I'm missing something since the translation I provided is not very cohesive. Could you please help me getting a better understanding of these sentence?

Answer 1

の in 高いの indeed is a pronoun, but in this case it's not 高いこと "that is expensive; expensiveness" but 高いもの "what is expensive; expensive one". More specifically, 「～のうち（の） [adj.] の」 means "the more [adj.] one (of two things)", which is what you see here. Thus 高いのにありつく should be understood "manage to eat the more expensive one (= 35 cent lunch)".

Now, 良い方だ is a kind of idiom that is not comparing anything inside the sentence. It is often used to describe how the situation is wretched, by saying a bad example is still "less bad" than the rest, or an unsatisfactory one all you can wish.

彼らはとても兵士と言えたものではなかった。訓練を受けてくれるのはまだ良い方で、腹が減ったからと勝手に家に帰る者もいた。弓を取らせても、十回に一回的に当たれば良い方だった。
You could by no means call them soldiers. Who willingly went through your training were much praiseworthy when some did go back home without leave because they felt hungry. When you let them shoot arrows, you could at most expect one hit on target every ten.

Thus, I'd translate せいぜい月に一度か二度、高いのにありつければ良い方だった as:

I considered myself lucky if I could (manage to) have the expensive one once or twice in a month...

Answer 2

From goo辞書: 「のに」 , one of the definition is

…時に。…場合に。「地震が来るのに備えておこう」: "Let's prepare in case the earthquake coming."

This time, there are two options of meals for "30 cents or 35 cents". So, 「高いのに」means choosing more expensive one i.e. price of 35 cents.

Also goo辞書: 「ありつく」

「ありつければ」 = 「ありつく」 + 「ければ」: conditional form

求めていたものをやっとの思いで手に入れる。

"manage to ~" seems appropriate here since it literally means "A lot of effort have been needed to get what you wanted".

「 "良い方だった"」here means "better off" rather than "the right way/things to do".

It is not talking about 「方法」. Here, 「方」 here means "choose one comparing to others". So, 「良い方」: "choose better one comparing to others"

So, All in all "It was better off if I managed to eat Chinese food which costs 35 cents at most once or twice. "