About My People's Story ...
A Decades-old promise
At the age of nine, I heard my aunt recount an epic tale of a family member to my grandmother. Auntie said, "Someone should write a book about our family! It'll be a bestseller, but it'd have to be fiction because no one would believe it!" I butted in with, "I'll do it! I'll write a book about our family!" Sixty years later, I've completed the task!
Who are they?
My people are fascinating and colorful characters. My People's Story is about my mom's side of the family, who migrated along "The Mother Road, aka Route 66, from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl days. I'd never heard of "Dust Bowl" days until I stayed in the hospital with Gran in 1994, and a young doctor used the term after Granny told him where she'd come from.
What's a Dust Bowl?
It was the largest migration of people in US history, caused by drought and horrific dust storms throughout the Plains during the mid-1930s. Most folks farmed, so with no rain for crops and the topsoil blown away, their ability to hold onto their farms was also destroyed. Many headed for the Golden State, where they were not well received. Frankly, they were treated cruelly and were oppressed for simply trying to achieve The American Dream and support their family. These were the people Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. My people had a rough journey but were far tougher than Steinbeck's fictional Joads. They, too, worked the orchards, produce fields, and packing houses...
So what happened in California?
Here's a little teaser ~ you still need to read the book for the good stuff!
The hills were gentle and rolling there in Stringtown, Oklahoma, but life definitely wasn't. Living off the land, growing food, and killing food, one had to be tough. Grandpa's kin were indeed tough, the men and the women. That's one of his sisters with my pregnant grandmother in 1940 in the photo to the right. Grandpa's kin fought for sport. They took their old world ways into their new world. And most folks raise their kids the way they were raised.
Mom's family made it up to Contra Costa County, where Grandpa worked in the shipyards for a spell, which was very unsatisfactory. They went back to being "Okie produce tramps," as many referred to the migrants. Up and down California, following the harvests on into Arizona and back up again, finally setting in Salinas because Grandma loved the weather.
Grandma and Grandpa did well in real estate ventures, eventually moving to the world-famous 17 Mile Drive. They weren't quite The Beverly Hillbillies; however, they weren't Monterey Peninsula Country Club members either . . . even though they paid for a membership when they purchased their home...
Come travel through time with my family and me. I trust you'll find some familiarity with our stories.
Cover photo - which is GMB?
None! ~ The Gang 1941
My grandmother and the children she had in 1941 (she had three more in the next five years). Mom’s the one with the Trump mugshot face. I’ve seen this throughout my life, and just, and I do mean just, put the pieces together. Mom said she was seven years old, and they were living in a tent camp when her mama made her fight those rock-throwing girls. I’m guessing this was taken after Mom kicked some little rock-throwing girls' asses.
They lived in that camp for a year. Mom was seven in 1941, which placed them in one of the sixteen migrant camps in California that were operated by the Farm Service Administration. This is a professional photo, presumably taken by someone documenting life in the camps. My people were dressed up for the occasion. Judging by the short-sleeved, lightweight clothes they were wearing and the size of the youngest daughter, born in October of 1940, I think this was probably in the summer of 1941. I’m guessing one of the southern California camps.
Sigh. I’ll be researching archives to see if I can find this photo, and perhaps a story that went along with it.
