After the dust settles

Dust can be a real nuisance. Anyone who’s ever done some serious home construction knows that. So imagine when you’re plagued by heavy dust storms for months or even years. It happened in the mid-1930s in the US Midwest when storms caused by drought and poor farming techniques plagued millions and even killed 6,500 people within a year. It was so bad that families were forced to migrate to other places, notably California — at least if the engines of their vehicles weren’t clogged by the dust.

This iconic picture of a family on their way from Oklahoma to the greener fields of California has become illustrative of the ‘Okies’ on the move. It was shot by Dorothea Lange who’d been hired by the Farm Security Administration to portray them, but her photographs were picked up by newspapers across the country. The author John Steinbeck is even believed to have been inspired by Lange’s pictures for his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath.

We tried to find out more about the family in the picture, but didn’t get very far. One caption told us ‘Sharecroppers family near Bakersfield, CA, April 7, 1935’, but that’s all. However, a former migrant named Byrd Monford Morgan was interviewed in 1981. He was the youngest of 13 in a farming family from Oklahoma and was 10 years old when they were forced to move in 1934: “Dad bought a truck to bring what we could. There were fifteen people to ride out in this truck in addition to what we could haul. It wasn't a lot. That wash pot sitting right there was one thing that came, also sewing machines. The kitchen table with the legs taken off was nailed across the bed across the top of it. Things were packed underneath it like bedding. I think my stepmother made up two five-gallon cans of cookies. Those were hanging on the back of the truck. This picture of that thing was as near the description of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as anything ever was.”

Words Jeroen Booij. Picture Dorothea Lange.

Published:

Monday April 25th, 2022

David Scott

30 April 2022, 09:21

You need to read The Grapes of Wrath to appreciate just what exploitative scumbags they were, you can print an awful lot of handbills when you are halving the wages daily? That is exactly what they did. That's capitalism for you.

Larry Lewis

02 May 2022, 04:51

Since about 1970, I've read that book about a dozen times. I once asked my father, an old-time car mechanic how in that one chapter, how they compressed the piston rings using brass wire and then it would give the cylinder a brass coating like that was some sort of benefit. He said that was nonsense. But, Steinbeck was a car guy who seemed to know his stuff and he did own a Tatra T87 so, I wonder?

Marvel

28 April 2022, 23:30

We need more information about the history and begins of automobile

Robbie Marenzi

25 April 2022, 16:07

The car is a 1926/27 Star made by Durant Motors and it has front wheel brakes, that were optional as from 1924, but only from the Durant factory in Oakland California, so this car was going back to California where it had been made.

david scott

25 April 2022, 14:28

I am unconvinced this is not a staged photo, the people look far too well dressed, and I doubt they would have used a touring car? Old cars "artisan" converted into a truck, as in "The Grapes of Wrath" were more common, and the people don't look like sharecroppers to me? Grapes of Wrath should be compulsory reading on the evils of greed.

Larry Lewis

26 April 2022, 20:40

I think you are right. I highly doubt that they got them a handbill saying they need men to pick peaches out there in California. Why would they print up them handbills if they didn't need men?

After the dust settles

Comments

Make a comment, ask a question, give your opinion, share additional information or start a discussion by filling in the fields below.