Rafael Rachael Alvarez, a contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, pays a visit to Sallisaw, Okla., the home base for the fictional Joad family in the John Steinbeck novel that takes place on Route 66, “The Grapes of Wrath.”
The first striking observation that Alvarez makes is the recession hasn’t hit Oklahoma as hard as other parts of the country. Sure, the economy in the Sooner State has weakened. But most of the truly hard times have hit elsewhere. Ironically, the state that appears to have fared the worst is the Joads’ promised land — California. Just check this interactive map to see.
Second, Alvarez observes this about the Oklahoma’s view of the Great Depression:
Oklahoma’s 331-mile stretch of Interstate 40 is dotted with signs for such sites as the Route 66 museum in Clinton, country singer Garth Brooks’s boyhood home in Yukon, and spots of frontier and Native American history.
But it’s strangely empty of references to the great migration of Sooners for the promised land of California farms and orchards.
The highway marker for Sallisaw notes the brutal “Trail of Tears” – the forced march of the defeated Cherokee nation from Georgia to pre-statehood Oklahoma – but the white man’s misfortune largely goes unmentioned beyond stories about Route 66, described by Steinbeck as the “mother road” that carried hundreds of thousands of migrants west.
Part of this is easy to explain. People in general try to remember the good times and don’t dwell on the bad. The Depression was a truly horrible era for many who lived through it, and have no desire to revisit it. It’s for the same reason that, up until recently, that Tulsa doesn’t have much commemorating the Race Riot of 1921. It was a tragedy and an embarrassing episode in that city’s history.
Also, “The Grapes of Wrath” was controversial in the Sooner State. Not only was the book banned and burned in many parts of the country, but many Oklahomans thought (wrongly, in my opinion) that Steinbeck’s portrayal of the Joads was demeaning.
Oklahoma has slowly started to accept “The Grapes of Wrath.” Such respect is hard-won. After all, Woody Guthrie’s hometown of Okemah has embraced its most famous son only in the last 15 years or so.
the writer was Rafael Alvarez, not rachael
Thank you for the heads-up. The correction has been made.
In the book, I thought that it was a case of a bad thing happening to good people. The Joads were good people who shared what they had with others.
But, the dust bowl was a bad thing. Of course we don’t want to honor it. But, because of it, I’ve heard Bakersfield, CA refered to as one of Oklahoma’s largest cities.
As for Woody Guthrie, well, he WAS a member of the American Communist Party. That’s a little hard to overlook, despite his matchless music.
A lot of people were members of the American Communist Party in Woody Guthrie’s day, although Guthrie himself was not, in point of fact, one of them.
That Guthrie (or anyone else) would be a Communist sympathizer is hardly shocking, given the context of the times: During the Great Depression, people were understandably disillusioned with capitalism. People were literally starving to death as a result of forces far beyond their control. Can anybody really blame them for questioning The Way We’ve Always Done It? I’m not saying communism is a great idea. But it looks terrific on paper — especially if capitalism has failed you in a colossal way.
Would it make sense for Hannibal, Mo., to snub Mark Twain because he used the n-word in his novels? After all, only a racist would use that word. We shouldn’t reward that. Better to pretend it doesn’t exist. Never mind that he used the word within the context of the time in which he was writing.
I can’t see that it made any more sense for Okemah to snub Woody Guthrie for being a Communist sympathizer. Both men were products of their time; judging them by modern standards seems terribly disingenuous.