Haunted by John Steinbeck and the Joads

[Steve]

In another thread, Kilgoretrout brings up a good point - Steinbeck's portrayal of Oklahomans was not something to resent. The Joads were hard-working, honorable people. So why do we consider this book (and movie) to be such a yoke around our necks? Instead of continuing this discussion in that thread and hijacking it, I've set up my response here. I wonder - is the resentment not with the Joads or Steinbeck's portrayal of Oklahomans, but rather the movie made the state look like a dry, barren wasteland?

[old okie]

Excellent points, Steve.

The only reason that might be at play for causing people to feel ashamed to be "Okies" ala the Joads is that they have no understanding of the true character and courage it took to deal with the intensely difficult circumstances faced by those living here during the Great Depression and then the Dust Bowl.

As an old Oklahoma history teacher who showed the film many times to my students, we all learned that the values exhibited and expressed in the movie are actually admirable traits that really do characterize Oklahomans today.

We have nothing of which to be ashamed for having "grit," a spirit of "can do," and the willingness to help others.

As for the movie's portrayal, it uses lots of theatrical license and implies that the entire state was part of the Dust Bowl, which isn't accurate; likewise, there were plenty of folks from other states who moved west and were called "Okies" who weren't really from Oklahoma.

For some people, I think the famous line from Pogo fits best: the "enemy" is "us"--we sabotage ourselves and apologize as Oklahomans for things that aren't true.

We're not a "glitter" or "glamor" state; never were, really won't be. But the character that can be found here is something unique. Afterall, no other state in the country was settled in the manner in which we were.

[okcpulse]

Okay, guys, hold on. By beef isn't with the Joads, or John Steinbeck's portrayal of Okies. Kilgoretrout misusnderstood me. Yes, I do understand the story. It is about perseverance in the toughest of times. Even when the Joads made it to California, they were faced with harsh treatment and was still able to hold themselves together despite every challenge that was thrown there way on their journey. That is an Oklahoman's true character.

By beef is with his description of the dust bowl and the strong connection he makes between Oklahoma and the weather disaster. The movie was even worse by taking liberty and, yes, making the state look like a barren, dry wasteland. Moreover, the mass exodus of "okies", as pointed out by old okie, wasn't just from Oklahoma, but Texas, Kansas and eastern Colorado. The real mass exodus from Oklahoma occurred in the 1940s when people headed for California mostly for manufacturing jobs, not agricultural jobs, years after the dust bowl's end in 1936. I've done a lot of studying on this part of Oklahoma's history to understand what really happened during the 1930s.

The Texas panhandle was the epicenter of the dust bowl, and by many historical accounts, was the primary cause, but few will ever be able to make that connection because of the history that was established forever linking Oklahoma as a whole to the dust bowl.

How else would an entire nation connect Oklahoma with the dust bowl?

[Jim Kyle]

The Texas panhandle was the epicenter of the dust bowl, and by many historical accounts, was the primary cause, but few will ever be able to make that connection because of the history that was established forever linking Oklahoma as a whole to the dust bowl.

I suspect I may be one of a very few people participating here who actually lived through the dust bowl and had rather direct first-hand experience of its effects. For starters, the epicenter was NOT Texas, but southeastern Colorado!

One of the classic photos that has come to symbolize the Dust Bowl shows a young boy running to his house, which is half-buried in blown dust. Yes, it was taken in Oklahoma -- but it was in the Panhandle, not the main part of the state. And the dust came in from the north -- Colorado.

I spent the Dust Bowl years in Elk City, which was on the edge of the hardest-hit areas. My father was the area supervisor for the Forest Service's Plains State Forestry Project, popularly know as the ShelterBelt Project, which planted fast-growing trees along east-west section lines to serve as windbreaks and lift the blown dust into the air rather than let it bury productive topsoil. This project operated mostly in three states: Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. Oklahoma was the southern end of its area, and only the counties in the western half of the state were included: Beckham, Custer, Greer, and Roger Mills were the ones with which I was most familiar as a youngster barely into my school years.

I remember only one major dust storm hitting Elk City during those years. It may have been 1935 or 1936, or even 1937 (the year I began first grade). It approached from the north, and lasted most of a day. However there were many "minor" storms that reduced visibility to a half-mile or so for several hours at a time, and to this day I dislike stiff winds and the yellow-sky look of blowing dust.

Today, almost none of the ShelterBelts still exist. The project ended in 1941, as the attention of the federal government turned toward defense preparation. However most of its personnel were called back in late 1942 to form the Emergency Rubber Project, which grew a variety of sagebrush that has higher-than-normal latex content. This bush, known as guayule, provided the seed molecules that enabled our nation to create synthetic rubber; we were told in 1945 that every B29 that flew was taking off on tires made possible by our guayule plants, although none of them reached full maturity before the war's end.

My family relocated to southern California on a 1,040-acre plantation between Beaumont and Banning, at the crest of the San Gorgonio Pass, in December of 1942. When I started school at Beaumont after the Christmas break, I was scorned as "another one of those damned Okies" and had to battle at every recess period. I'm sure none of the other students had read Steinbeck, but they certainly had a stereotype planted in their young minds.

And the worst dust storm I ever experienced happened on that guayule plantation between Palm Springs and L.A., in the spring of 1943. It reduced visibility to less than five feet -- but lasted less than a day, and its worst effects were limited to the plantation itself, which had been stripped of ground cover in preparation for planting the crop.

My only complaint with Steinbeck's work is that he failed miserably to do his research. Had he placed the Joads' farm in Roger Mills county, the desolation would have been quite believable -- and the folk there are still every bit as good as those from Little Dixie (where he did place their origin)...

[dankrutka]

Moreover, the mass exodus of "okies", as pointed out by old okie, wasn't just from Oklahoma, but Texas, Kansas and eastern Colorado.

Sorry if I misunderstood you, but I don't think you explained your view in much detail. Anyway, the book does NOT make it look the migration was just Oklahomans. It contains characters from Kansas, Arkansas (called Arkies in the book), and Texas. That's just off the top of my head. I agree that there are some minor historical discrepencies, but I think Steinbeck did a great job of getting the essence of some of the injustice of the time. He also taught that we shouldn't judge others (how often are "white trash" people dismissed merely on appearance).

[Steve]

Great stuff Jim. I really do hope I someday get to meet you in person someday.

[okcpulse]

You are correct, I did not explain my view very well. I tried to avoid hijacking the thread, so I kept it brief, but came across harsh. This is a subject i hold passionately. I have met many people over the years who see Oklahoma as a desolate nowhere, and often refer to the novel and the movie when I ask why they have that impression.

As Oklahoma City continues it's momentum, growth and national exposure, those images will no doubt take a back seat. I have noticed a lot of national sports writers have toned down their backhanded OKC small town remarks, due in large part to the Thunder's success.

Nonetheless, many, even in Texas, are often shocked to find that the dust bowl covered a portion of the state, and not in it's entirety.

[okcpulse]

I suspect I may be one of a very few people participating here who actually lived through the dust bowl and had rather direct first-hand experience of its effects. For starters, the epicenter was NOT Texas, but southeastern Colorado!

One of the classic photos that has come to symbolize the Dust Bowl shows a young boy running to his house, which is half-buried in blown dust. Yes, it was taken in Oklahoma -- but it was in the Panhandle, not the main part of the state. And the dust came in from the north -- Colorado.

I spent the Dust Bowl years in Elk City, which was on the edge of the hardest-hit areas. My father was the area supervisor for the Forest Service's Plains State Forestry Project, popularly know as the ShelterBelt Project, which planted fast-growing trees along east-west section lines to serve as windbreaks and lift the blown dust into the air rather than let it bury productive topsoil. This project operated mostly in three states: Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. Oklahoma was the southern end of its area, and only the counties in the western half of the state were included: Beckham, Custer, Greer, and Roger Mills were the ones with which I was most familiar as a youngster barely into my school years.

I remember only one major dust storm hitting Elk City during those years. It may have been 1935 or 1936, or even 1937 (the year I began first grade). It approached from the north, and lasted most of a day. However there were many "minor" storms that reduced visibility to a half-mile or so for several hours at a time, and to this day I dislike stiff winds and the yellow-sky look of blowing dust.

Today, almost none of the ShelterBelts still exist. The project ended in 1941, as the attention of the federal government turned toward defense preparation. However most of its personnel were called back in late 1942 to form the Emergency Rubber Project, which grew a variety of sagebrush that has higher-than-normal latex content. This bush, known as guayule, provided the seed molecules that enabled our nation to create synthetic rubber; we were told in 1945 that every B29 that flew was taking off on tires made possible by our guayule plants, although none of them reached full maturity before the war's end.

My family relocated to southern California on a 1,040-acre plantation between Beaumont and Banning, at the crest of the San Gorgonio Pass, in December of 1942. When I started school at Beaumont after the Christmas break, I was scorned as "another one of those damned Okies" and had to battle at every recess period. I'm sure none of the other students had read Steinbeck, but they certainly had a stereotype planted in their young minds.

And the worst dust storm I ever experienced happened on that guayule plantation between Palm Springs and L.A., in the spring of 1943. It reduced visibility to less than five feet -- but lasted less than a day, and its worst effects were limited to the plantation itself, which had been stripped of ground cover in preparation for planting the crop.

My only complaint with Steinbeck's work is that he failed miserably to do his research. Had he placed the Joads' farm in Roger Mills county, the desolation would have been quite believable -- and the folk there are still every bit as good as those from Little Dixie (where he did place their origin)...

Many thanks, Jim, for your valuable information. I took notes on your post =)

[Jim Kyle]

Great stuff Jim. I really do hope I someday get to meet you in person someday.

I'm going to try to make it to the Retro Metro meeting this month...

[Jim Kyle]

Here's the photo I mentioned, taken in Cimarron county in 1936 by FSA photographer Arthur Rothstein, and it's the single most popular photo in the entire Farm Security Administration collection according to their web site... Incidentally, all the FSA photos are in the public domain in the USA.

[Questor]

In another thread, Kilgoretrout brings up a good point - Steinbeck's portrayal of Oklahomans was not something to resent. The Joads were hard-working, honorable people. So why do we consider this book (and movie) to be such a yoke around our necks? Instead of continuing this discussion in that thread and hijacking it, I've set up my response here. I wonder - is the resentment not with the Joads or Steinbeck's portrayal of Oklahomans, but rather the movie made the state look like a dry, barren wasteland?

Look at the role the Joads play in that movie and it is no different than how hard-working Irish were viewed in New York 50 years before that, or how hard-working Mexicans are viewed in our very own state today. To some in California the Joads and people like them, no matter how decent and hard-working, were less-fortunate people who were coming to steal away jobs and move in right next door and do annoyingly uncouth things (it's what they thought regardless of whether or not true). Same situation, same emotions. Oklahomans were the "migrant workers" of the 1930s US. Some people are uncomfortable with that, probably because it reminds them that the thing they don't like today is what we were yesterday.

[Rover]

There is a great book to read about this time in Oklahoma's history (and of the region) by the name of The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.

[Snowman]

I think there may be some over estimating of how the book is affecting modern depictions of Oklahoma, sure it might have had more of an effect when it came out in 1939 when most of readers were adults out of interest in it. However most of the people who have read it over the last several decades were middle to high school students for an assignment and likely would hardly remember it.

[betts]

You're all assuming people actually read the book. The majority of people from elsewhere who think of the Dust Bowl when they think of Oklahoma probably read the Grapes of Wrath Spark notes, at most. But the concept of Oklahoma as flat, dry and dusty is out there, perhaps fed by the movie or vague impressions of the book. As someone who isn't from here, I had a negative impression of Oklahoma but cannot pinpoint the source. I did, however, read the book in it's entirety and never saw the movie, so who knows?

[Brett]

The breastfeeding of a grown man is probably why Okies don't like the Grapes of Wrath.

[Edgar]

Aren't we more haunted by Sally Kern and Rep Shorty.
The Joads are heroic, used to be proud to call myself an Okie, not so much anymore.

[dankrutka]

The breastfeeding of a grown man is probably why Okies don't like the Grapes of Wrath.

LOL. It saved his life though and was symbolic! Some of my students got really caught up on that part, but it tied together the themes of the books so well that I liked the ending. The only thing that always kind of got me was the use of the word "mysteriously" to end the book. That's what makes the breastfeeding scene a little stranger.

Sorry if that's too specific for most. I've read the book about 6-7 times over the last 5 years.

[PennyQuilts]

There is a great book to read about this time in Oklahoma's history (and of the region) by the name of The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.

I was going to mention this. I agree, it is a fantastic book. It educated me about the dust bowl and I am ashamed to admit that I was nearly fifty before I realized where the dustbowl was actually centered.

[Doug Loudenback]

An enormous misconception exists (even among Oklahomans) as to where the "Dust Bowl" was ... the area was a huge portion of the Great Plains states ... and even extended further north than the image below reflects ... the image below is from Geoff Cunfer at eh.net/encyclopedia and shows the most concentrated Dust Bowl area ...



Whether from the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, wherever, migrants became known as "Okies." See this Nebraska website.

Even though the above map does not include Oklahoma or other counties east of Canadian, Oklahoma County and those further east were certainly affected. My wife has related stories to me of Seminole County during this time and I'm sure that's not the eastern edge of the part of Oklahoma that was affected.

The images below show western Oklahoma County during the Dust Bowl period and are taken from the Okc Metropolitan Library website ... after clicking that link, you may need to press your refresh key (F5) to see the article by Jana Hausburg ...

Western Oklahoma County in 1936



Lake Overholser in 1935, looking north to US 66 bridge, upper right corner



For some, especially Oklahomans who were farmers in the far west and northwest, there was no option available but to try to find survival elsewhere, not uncommonly in California. They had no land, or at least none that would support agriculture, they had no jobs, but they did have children who needed to survive, along with their parents. These are the people that Steinbeck caricatured, and, for that group, Steinbeck gave fair, decent, and honorable description.

Other western/northwestern Oklahomans had more options and remained in Oklahoma even through the times were hard -- hard, but bearable. My maternal grandmother and her family lived in Clinton during this time but her husband had a job and despite the need to put wet sheets on windows and cloths over their mouths during the time, etc., they didn't need to leave the state in order to survive. Their income did not derive from agriculture like so many of the fleeing Oklahomans did.

My thought is that all of them, those who left and those who remained, are to be honored and, in any event, they are all a huge and proud part of our Oklahoma heritage.

Edgar, there is no way that I'm about to allow people like Sally Kern to taint my perception that being a Okie is a good thing to be, even though I understand and agree with where you are coming from. She and her political-kin, as distasteful as they may be to some and are to me, do not have the power to change my perception that being an Okie is a good, honorable, and proud thing to be.

Jim Kyle (and anyone else), I do hope you will attend the February 20, 6:00 p.m. Retro Metro meeting at IAO Gallery, 706 W Sheridan Avenue. The 1st half hour is a walking tour of some Film Row buildings but I won't be arriving until around 6:30 ... I'll return your slides to you then, if you come.

For those wanting more about the Dust Bowl, you might check out my own 2007 Dust Bowl blog post, here.

[Double Edge]

The dust itself didn't always stay that local...

The impact of the Dust Bowl was felt all over the U.S. During the same April as Black Sunday, 1935, one of FDR's advisors, Hugh Hammond Bennett, was in Washington D.C. on his way to testify before Congress about the need for soil conservation legislation. A dust storm arrived in Washington all the way from the Great Plains. As a dusty gloom spread over the nation's capital and blotted out the sun, Bennett explained, "This, gentlemen, is what I have been talking about." Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act that same year.

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/far.../water_02.html

[Jim Kyle]

Doug, I do plan to be there if weather permits, and I'll bring along a couple of copies of my 2008 article on 1950 Classen graduate Richard P. May, who started as a clerk in Film Row, rose to become VP in charge of restoration for Turner's film libraries, and in semi-retirement is still actively recovering film classics for posterity.

Wasn't it Gov. Bartlett who created the "Oklahoma is OK!" campaign and gave out "Honorary Okie" pins to national dignitaries?

[MsProudSooner]

Steinbeck's portrayos of Okies might not have been something to resent, but the attitude of the rest of the country toward Okies and Oklahoma in general as a result of Steinbeck's book was something to resent. I think that's probably why many people of my father's generation (born in Weatherford in 1921) resented the book. I think that many people who didn't leave Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl resented the book because it made 'heros' of the people who left the state. I think they believed the real heros were the people who stayed and tried to make things better.

[Doug Loudenback]

MsProudSooner, I certainly respect your dad's perspective, and yours. But about the farmers who lost their land and couldn't grow anything on it whether they stayed or didn't, they were down to the most basic and rock-bottom of needs of having mouths to feed and it is not to their discredit, but is instead to their credit, that they attempted to find a way to do that beyond our state's border. Non-agrarian people were not so completely failed as were the farmers, and most of them probably stayed.

But, as to the perceptions of others outside our state, well, they have and will perceive what they want to, whether those perceptions are spot on or not. We have no control over that, whether based in ignorance or not as they often are ... even though that national perception has been changing.

[Pete]

This is a great thread!

I've learned a lot... Thanks everyone for the contributions.

[Edmond_Outsider]

If Steinbeck got some of his geography wrong (arguable), he got the convergence of historical forces correct. The geography was a convenient excuse to discredit the entire book by those who didn't read it in the first place.
The forces which the Joads are fighting against are:

1. Drought which turned much of Oklahoma into unproductive land even if they didn't have the dusters of the famed photos.
2. Overfarming of soil depleting cotton in many parts of the state ( like where the Joads are reported to be from) which combined with drought, rendered much of OK into useless wasteland.
3. There was also the end of the tennant system which the Joads were part of. Specifically, mechinization rendered the jobs of the tennants redundent. As the book says, a "cat" can do the work of 100 men. The Joads were one of the families whose way of life ended
4. The banking crisis which foreclosed on farms and business forcing non-agrarian workers on the road in search of opportunity.