Dustbowl Blues!

My name is Woody Steinbeck it was given me by my Pa Joe to signify the plentifulness of the state of California and in celebration of his and my ma’s escape from the dust bowl of what was southern Oklahoma. They came west in search of a dream and to escape like so many other families the terrible famine and drought that hit those southern states in the 1920’s. They came west because they had heard of this Golden state where oranges grew on the roadside and all you had to do was put out your hand and pluck one.

I was born in a trailer park in Salinas in the year of our lord 1936 and have lived all of my life here in this small town. Some folks round here consider us trash. God knows why? We never did them any harm. Yet for most of my life I was called an Oakie and they seemed to think it was their god given right to come round here and shout out insults.

My Pa died when I was 10 years old. Some say of a broken heart. It seemed he never recovered from what he lost as a sodbuster. All those years toiling and working the land chasing a vision whereby he could live independently and feed his family was lost almost overnight. He told me stories when I was a boy growing up not only of their journey to this Promised Land but of his time before they came here. How each June having plated the corn in spring they would wait for the rains. They always needed the rain. Big clouds moved up out of Texas and the Gulf, high heavy clouds, rain heads. The men in the fields looked up at the clouds and held their breath. They sniffed at them wetting their finger and holding them up to see which way the wind was blowing. Even the horses became nervous while the clouds were up. But very little came that year apart from a spattering and the clouds moved on to the next county and the sun flared once more and that was it.

In the dust there were small craters where the rain had fallen. When the winds came a week later the dry corn also fell, laying row upon row of dry husks not fit for any purpose for mile upon mile. It broke most men that year. The dust was bad real bad. The wind grew stronger. Little by little the mixing dust that rose and sailed across the fields blocking out the sun darkened the sky and broke a thousand hearts. It was the second harvest in a row they had lost.

The dawn came, but no day. In the grey sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave little light, like dusk; and as the day advanced, the day slipped back into darkness and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen corn. Pa would stop then and look east, remembering, a tear in his eye. I could do so little to console him. Ma tried but like so many of the men that came west their spirit had been shattered along with the land that they had lost.

There was no compensation from the government and the money Pa had borrowed from the bank he was unable to pay back and when word got out that they were thinking on leaving the Carpetbaggers moved in from Texas and bought the land at a knock down price. The banks wanted tractors on the land not people. It did not matter too much that these new arrivals new little about the seasons or the soil just as long as they demolished the homesteads and opened the prairie.

Highway 66 was the main migrant road that ran from Mississippi to Bakersfield. It was a road of dreams for many and a nightmare for most. Cars broke down on the long stretches between towns and people died usually of exposure to the unrelenting sun. Grandpas and grandmas were buried in unmarked roadside graves and those that did mark the spot where their parents died seldom left more than a couple of hastily tied together twigs to signify the cross of our Lord. The names of the towns meant little to the people coming west. Babies were born and entered the world in Wichita Falls, El Reno, Elk City, Texola and through the broken sun-rotted mountains of Arizona and so on all the way into Colorado. They were always tired dusty hot and thirsty. Radiators steamed and crankshafts broke. The highway became their home.

People in California did not want them there. They did not want disinherited people from the dustbowl states. They had enough problems of their own with the sweat-backs coming north out of Mexico without the starving thousands coming in from the east. So they were determined to have a stand off to defend their land. Pa told me that it was only government intervention that stopped a bloodbath. They were ready to die as their forefathers had in the Civil War. Hunger is a driving force that no amount of bullets can stop.

Over the high coast mountains and over the valleys the grey clouds marched in from the ocean. The wind blew fiercely and silently and high in the air. Clouds came in brokenly and filled with rain and settled low over the west. And the wind stopped and left the clouds deep and solid. The rain began with gusty showers, pauses and downpours until finally it settled into a single tempo, small drops and a steady beat. Rain that was grey to see through turned the midday light to evening. My Pa cried with the rain. For two days the earth drank the rain until the earth was full. This was California.

I am 20 years old now and it is time to leave. Salinas is in the county of Monterey at the mouth of the Salinas Valley, which leads down to the Pacific coast 8 miles away. It is a small mainly suburban town with not much happening if your interests lay outside of growing salad crops. It is ironical to think that my own Pa who loved the soil could not get a job here on a farm because of prejudice. Yet out there on most of the hills down that valley there grows sufficient food to feed most of the state. I have become immune to the bias. Ma is old now. She will be 48 this year. The struggle as aged her. She as friends around here although most of those from out east went into LA and Frisco seeking work and she as never seen them again. Now it is my turn and I am going over to the east coast to a place called Sag Harbour New York, a small enclave east of the Big Apple out towards Long Island. It was a place that figured most in my own father’s imagination it being comprised mostly of Irish/German people and the home of his grandpa. I hope to take a post in teaching next year after my graduation. Ma is proud and so am I.

Well the Greyhound bus is coming now and I will be going back down the road the way most of my ancestors came. I will try not to shed too many tears on that highway.

Ma smiled a tear, ‘I knowed ya would I knowed’ she looked down at her red hands…