Emily's blog

As soon as I began to read these WPA travel guides, I realized that they would make no sense to me unless I had some connection with the place.

That said, I began by reading about the town from which I graduated high school: Marblehead, Massachusetts.


I first visited Marblehead as a tourist myself, while I was still living in California. To me the town seemed like any other upper-middle class yachting town in New England: cute, quaint, and antique, if not a little dull. So imagine how surprised I was upon reading:

“Said a Marblehead of a later day- “Our ancestors came not here for religion. Their main end was to catch fish.’ As might have been expected from such ungodliness, early Marblehead was a favorite with the powers of darkness. Many a citizen mat Satan himself riding in stat in a coach and four, or was chased through the streets by a corpse in a coffin. The eerie lament of the ‘screeching woman of Marblehead’ resounded across the harbor, and Puritan Salem hanged old ‘Mammy Red’ of Marblehead who knew how to turn enemies’ butter to blue wool. Within a decade unruly Marblehead was without regret permitted to become a separate town, ‘the greatest Towne for fishing in New England’ “ (Massachusetts, 272).

Either the writers of the Massachusetts panel didn’t take their job very seriously and took it upon themselves to become intoxicated on the job (is isn’t that difficult to believe, Massachusetts can get pretty mind-numbingly dull), or prissy little Marblehead* might actually have an interesting past. I once heard that Marblehead was the place where they sent all the drunks from Salem, this must have been what they were talking about.

The tour that the guide takes you around Marblehead is pretty unremarkable. They travel around most of the historical sites that I visited when I first went to Marblehead. As a town very preoccupied with it’s own role in the Revolutionary War and post-colonial history, (as the title of the chapter suggests, Marblehead: Where Tradition Lingers) it isn't that incredible that all of the landmarks are still standing today. Their recommended foot tour would be almost identical to a tour I might take you on. Not much has changed in the past 80 years. Not that it surprises me much.

Next I looked at the California guide, which is structured much differently from the Massachusetts booklet. Instead of the cute “walking tours” found in Massachusetts, most of the California tours appear to be just for cars. I also looked at a few towns that I was familiar with in California. Most of the historical sites are the same missions we learned about in 4th grade, which makes sense. But there does appear to be an emphasis on the beauty, views, weather, and beaches found in California.
 
These guides were probably excellent tools for travelling the US. They are specific and full of enough useful information to make it easy to visit any state or town that you are interested in. I definitely would have used one. Still could for Marblehead, at least.
 
*It must be noted that I don’t actually hate Marblehead or Massachusetts. It’s actually a swell state. Lots history. And apples. And trees. And words conspicuously missing R’s.

During the Depression the connotation of a “tourist” seemed to be a lot less negative than it is today. The articles speak of tourism only as a new and growing phenomenon- a little exploitive sure (as seen with the caves in Agee’s piece), but on the whole, good. The masses were getting paid leisure time, which was nice for them, and their desire for adventure helped re-fuel the American economy. What’s the big deal?

In the Dud Avocado, a travel novel about a girl’s visit to Paris in the late 50’s, a American man she meets and “falls in love with” describes (his remarkably sexist vision of) the tourist: “ ‘Basically,’ he began, ‘tourist can be divided into two categories. The Organized- the Disorganized’ ” (10-12). He goes on to describe the two groups and their subsections- one who goes terribly overly prepared, the other who loses everything and likes to just live by whim. The catch? All tourists are women. “The only male tourists-though naturally there are men visitors- you know, men visiting foreign countries… are the ones loping around after their wives” (16). Throughout the book, the narrator struggles with this image, with this idea of being branded as a tourist. The real truth of the matter is that no one wants to be called a foreigner, a sightseer, and if that means condemning the label to the opposite gender, or race, or social class, so what?

Here is an article from a men’s magazine that gives (somewhat obvious) tips on how not to appear like a foreigner, and here is another from Verizon describes with pride how he was once mistaken as French, and how he considers himself a good traveler instead of a tourist. Why doesn’t he want to be seen as a tourist? “They are depicted as Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, sandals-and-socks sporting, loud-talking, rude and often overweight. Plus, they are often seen as gullible – an easy target for a scam.”

West also helps uncover the problem in A Cool Million. As we discussed briefly yesterday in class, tourism can really only present a fetishized version of a culture. You can’t really own a place after having visited it for a few days. But everyone was determined to get themselves a slice, anyhow. People will even go so far as stealing just for a souvenir, “The theft of stuffed animals (about a dozen a year) and similar keepsakes is the bother now,” Agee writes of Log Cabin Farms, “that and the lady’s room- ‘my God they even swipe the tiles off the wall- I’m not kidding.‘“ (55).

No one wants to be mistaken for a gullible, style-less thief. But you can’t help being a tourist in a foreign place. You won’t look or talk or act like the locals. You'll probably need to use a map too. And when you get there, you might want to take some pictures. You really can’t help it. The only thing that you can do is to be respectful of the local culture. And just try not wear socks with sandals.
 

As I was reading A Cool Million I began thinking about the topic for my next blog post. Then it hit me: Candide! A Cool Million is EXACTLY like Voltaire’s Candide! Delighted by my own brilliance (ok, I’m exaggerating here), I googled Candide A Cool Million to see if I was stating the obvious or if maybe I was the first to make the perfect connection. To my disappointment, the very first website that popped up was last year's Place Studies site with, yes, a comparison between Candide and A Cool Million. Even the Wikipedia article mentions it.Yeah. Real original.

So I won’t be writing about the many ways in which A Cool Million mimics Candide. I’ll instead focus on the modern day “philosophy” that a Voltaire or a West would want to disprove.

But if you’re a bit fuzzy on the details of Candide and how it might relate to A Cool Million, I’ll make a brief summary (also, if you’re interested in the book and have some time to waste on the internet, I posted the first section of Candide the musical below. It’s really amusing even if musicals make you want to puke sometimes.):

Candide is the bastard child of a Baron‘s sister. He lives with the noble family and falls in love with his cousin, Cunegonde (almost exactly like Betty except wealthy.) All the characters of Candide are taught by a philosopher named Pangloss who is an almost exact replica of Shagpole. They are taught to believe that they live in the best of all possible worlds, where only the best of all possible things can happen. War breaks out and a lot of people are disemboweled, Cunegonde is raped and made a sex slave repeatedly… Pangloss contracts syphilis… and on and on, The only thing that doesn’t change throughout the story is that the characters all still pathetically believe that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Even the racism in Cool Million is pretty comparable to Candide.

So while I was reading A Cool Million I couldn’t help but wonder what a modern philosopher’s take on the overly optimistic or rags-to-riches philosophy would be?

My first thought was that it would have to be something to do with science solving all problems. Maybe it would end up as more science fiction than anything else (Vonnegut anyone?) Or maybe it would make fun of the lack of evolution in humans and the continual evolution of technology? The overuse of antidepressants? ADD medication? Plastic surgery? That could be funny.

Or maybe a modern version would make fun of the everyone-is-as-special-as-a-snowflake-philosophy. It could feature masses of teenagers watching rapstars (are they even called rapstars? Did I just make that up?) and pregnant sixteen year olds between hour long advertisements on MTV. They would walk out of their house so that they could talk about it, with their friends. Who would all be dressed the same. And they would all respect each other as individuals with individual opinions, so they would make sure to always agree, all the time.

Or better yet, maybe our modern optimism isn’t optimism at all. Maybe the real satire is in how sarcastic and pessimistic we are even when our stomachs are full, our homes warm, and we live under a functioning democracy. 

-Bonnie Parker, “The Trail’s End”

I have to confess: I have been infatuated with the story of Bonnie and Clyde for some time now. It’s hard not to be. The tale is so undeniably sexy. Two lovers running from the law, robbing banks during the great Depression? It’s classic.

So I was really surprised when reading Bonnie and Clyde: the Lives Behind the Legend this summer (yes, that is how I actually spend my free time) that the tale we usually hear about the duo is pretty bland when compared with the real thing. Bland but romanticized. In other words, Bonnie and Clyde didn’t just rob banks, giggle, and screw all the time. Shocking, right?

First things first: neither Clyde nor Bonnie was particularly big or menacing. Bonnie was barely 4’11, and Clyde just 5’3 (source).

Bonnie Parker also wrote poetry. Her poem “The Trail’s End” (the beginning of which is posted above) tells their story. She specifically blames the police for forcing them-specifically Clyde- to turn against the law. 

“They call them cold-blooded killers
they say they are heartless and mean. 
But I say this with pride 
that I once knew Clyde, 
when he was honest and upright and clean.  

But the law fooled around; 
kept taking him down, 
and locking him up in a cell. 
Till he said to me; "I'll never be free, 
so I'll meet a few of them in hell" 

As early as 16, Clyde had a criminal record for turning in a rental car late. According to Shneider, the author of Lives Behind the Legend, after this incident the police would pick him up for any crime committed in the area, and he was not able to keep a job. So, as Bonnie suggests in her poem, Clyde turned to full-time crime as his only option. 

The vague middle of the story is fairly well known: Clyde met Bonnie at a party; there were several robberies (mostly of gas stations, and little family groceries, and only a very few banks.); a few killings… Oh, but those famous pictures taken? The ones where Bonnie is pictured with a cigar in her mouth? She didn’t actually smoke. The cigar was borrowed as a joke from Buck, Clyde’s brother and fellow member of the “Barrow gang.” (55) What is more, it is often claimed that Bonnie never fired a shot during her time as an outlaw. 

With almost a year to go until their bloody end, Clyde and Bonnie were in a horrific car accident, leaving Bonnie’s leg so badly burned that she was never able to walk properly again. She mostly hopped or was carried by Clyde. Buck died in a shoot out with the cops not long after. As Bonnie wrote,

“They don't think they're too smart or desperate
they know that the law always wins.

They've been shot at before;
but they do not ignore,
that death is the wages of sin.”

When they were finally shot down, it was after being lured into a trap set by the parents of one of their fellow gang members. 

“Some day they'll go down together
they'll bury them side by side.
To few it'll be grief,
to the law a relief
but it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.”

Knowing that their end was not long in coming, Bonnie made her mother promise to bury them together. However, her mother was so angry at Clyde- who she believed was at fault, that that they two had to be laid to rest at entirely different burial grounds.

 

There is really so much more to the Bonnie and Clyde story than I have been able to write about here... For instance, there was a period of time near the end of the story when Bonnie was carrying around a rabbit in the Barrow getaway car to give to her family as a gift. There was also talk among the gang of Bonnie and Clyde's bad hygiene- they would laugh at anyone who brushed their teeth. There is a certain kind of fatalism about the two- both knew that it couldn't end any way other than death. And it wasn't fun either. Even as famous bank robbers, they always had to sleep in the woods, or when they were lucky, in motels. They couldn't return home because of the police.

If you are interested in the full story, I really urge you to read Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend. It may seem a little awkward at first, because it's strangely told from Clyde's point of view, but it gives so much more detail to the over-glamorized the story that we all know.

Other useful sources:
http://mredpolicekidnap.blogspot.com/
http://texashideout.tripod.com/bc.htm
http://texashideout.tripod.com/quotes.html (quotes from the Barrow Gang, police, and relatives)
http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/clyde/clyde.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1186790/Bonnie-Clyde-How-pair-bit-crooks-worlds-famous-gangsters.html
http://www.legacy.com/ns/news-story.aspx?t=-years-of-bonnie-parker&id=116

I loved Waiting for Nothing, although I couldn’t exactly tell you why. It was powerful, and it changed me as I read it. At one point (the end of chapter 4, I think) I was actually talking to the book. Swearing at it. That is not normal for me.

Maybe it was Tom Kromer’s narration.  It was so strong, so consistent. And his “tough guy” voice contrasted so perfectly, so horribly, with his desperation. Unlike Grapes of Wrath, Kromer didn’t seem to be calling for pity. No, he was demanding humanity. How could anyone just sit and watch a man starve, shrivel, and die? There was something in his portrayals of the rich folks that was at once intensely realistic and cartoonish. It reminded me of how we actually see people who we don’t know intimately: as “others”, just caricatures of who they really are. In this way Kromer used typical flat characters to create a sort of hyper- realism.  The narrator could not know (and probably did not care) what anyone else was thinking or feeling. His moments of sympathy are moving, but still somehow removed. It ties in perfectly with Tom’s lack of basic human necessities. It also explains why a good, honest man might, in hard times, turn immoral. Tom and the novice prostitute Yvonne talk about it in her apartment:
“ ‘You look at things different when you have not eaten for two days,’ I say. ‘I know I have gone that long myself. I have stolen. I have done worse than steal when I have gone that long.’
 ‘Yes, you look at things different,’ she says. ‘What is supposed to be wrong does not look wrong when the only right things looks like something to eat…’ “ (84).

Tom Kromer also used shock to his advantage. The fourth chapter- the chapter that was edited out in its first publication in the U.K- actually left me gaping. To compare it again to The Grapes of Wrath, it reminded me of the last scene when Rose of Sharon nurses the starving migrant worker. Both scenes deal with the theme of personal violation for preservation. However, the meaning is changed entirely by the fact that Rose of Sharon was acting on someone else’s behalf, and Tom was only working to save himself. Altruism makes the scene in Grapes of Wrath is nearly hopeful. The scene in Waiting for Nothing is just desperate. “You can always depend on a stiff having to pay for what he gets. I pull off my clothes and crawl into bed” (53).

In my opinion, the scene in Waiting for Nothing is much stronger. 

 There was an itch. The rich felt it along with the poor, and (if what we have read so far is any indication) they became tourists; treating states, land, and country like collectibles. But the poor were hitching themselves out of their homes by any means possible just to search for a meal. Two characters- or maybe caricatures is a better word- of the Great Depression, “boxcar” Bertha and Woody Guthrie tell stories full of yearning for the wild travel on the rails.

As Bertha put it, “No, men don’t satisfy me any more than my baby does. I’m afraid of Baby. I don’t know why, but just recently I made up my mind to settle down in New York and become a real mother, but I just couldn’t do it. Why am I afraid of my child? Why do I want more than one man? I am truly married to the boxcars. There’s something constantly itching in my soul that only the road and the box cars can satisfy. Jobs, lover, a child- don’t seem to be able to curb my wanderlust.” (196).

Reading these stories that glorify poverty as much as they cry for aid, I was reminded first of a popular “gypsy-punk” band called Gogol Bordello. Their songs, titled things like Wanderlust King and Nomadic Chronicle, often lean towards the theatrical, although they do have a feeling of authenticity- no doubt borrowed from their frontman’s nomadic Eastern-European background and Romani roots. He stated that, "The band basically became a gang of people who also feel at home when traveling.”

But the connection goes much further back than that. What is the real difference between the “migrant workers” of the 30’s and the traditional gypsies of Europe? Heritage, I suppose. Gypsies are defined as both, “A member of a people that arrived in Europe in migrations from northern India around the 14th century, now also living in North America and Australia,” and “A person who moves from place to place as required for employment…” And the cleanest definition from Urban Dictionary calls them, “Travelers. The lowest of the low. Subhuman creatures found everywhere in England but especially in the midlands.”

Sound a little close to opinions about the hoboes or homeless?

This is article from yesterday's LA Times that depicts a problem with France booting gypsies out of the country.

Thinking of Depression victims as America’s gypsies really just creates more questions. If the Depression hadn’t ended so abruptly, would a group of impoverished nomads still exist in the United States? Would they face the same infamy as the Gypsies of Europe? Is there something about the nomadic lifestyle that inspires music more than anything else? Have a made a serious slight on the Romani culture by comparing them to down and out Americans?

Here is a link to the New York Gypsy Festival, happening this weekend!!! If you happen to read this and want to go, let me know.

...And here is a link to a documentary about the real American Gypsies, probably proving me wrong. There are still Romani gypsies in the US. 

P.S. Photo Challenge: Are these Romani or migrant workers?

I didn’t find Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip at all “light and satirical” (ix) despite what Erika Wolf says in the book’s introduction. Well, satirical maybe. But absolutely not light.

The story read as sort of a jeer at the U.S. The trip reminded me of the pettiness of the Cold War conflict itself. It was like was like boy peeking into his brother's trick-or-treating bag because he knew that his brother had less candy. He would smile and then remark, “You don’t have very many snickers bars do you? All I see are laffy taffy.”

Except that this story did give Americans dimension. We are not entirely flat; those typified greedy capitalists with cigars, or the emaciated and poor rummaging through garbage cans. No, we are depicted as, …”excellent workers, jacks-of-all-trades... They are precise, but not so much as to be pedantic. They are neat and punctual, without being so fussy that other people would start to make fun of them for it. They know how to keep their word, and they trust other people’s words. They are always ready to help. They are good comrades and easy to get along with. At the same time, there are a lot of annoyingly childish and primitive traits in the people’s character. But the most interesting childlike quality, curiosity, is almost absent among Americans” (26). In their eyes we are great for our skyscrapers and efficient roads, but dull. Our cities are lifeless, lusterless.

When I first read this piece, I was torn between dismissing it as pure propaganda, and thinking that they had actually touched upon something real and sore in American culture. Although I disagree that all of our towns are as colorless as they seem to think, you have only to stop in town’s shopping mall to know exactly what they are talking about. There is an empty, soulless feeling about them. Each one with the same stores, the same clothing, the same advertisements, and the same preteens with their braces, ogling jeans and half naked bodies in Abercrombie and Fitch.

In the United States there is such a thirst for culture, for otherness. Abroad we are known for McDonalds, shirts with popped collars, and rap music, but inside we scoff at pop culture and become obsessed with foreign cultural identity. I once had a discussion with a French professor about how renouncing American culture and trying to become “French” was the most American thing to do of all.

Still, despite the story’s possible relevance, it does read an awful lot like propaganda. Ilf and Petrov write, “The word ‘America’ has well-developed grandiose associations for a Soviet person…We want to change that image”(15). Not that I believe that they had any choice in the matter. But it does seem in a little bit odd that the two comrades so are eager and curious to tour the US when it is so obviously failing.

...Look who has more candy.


Note: the video linked below is the beginning of a really fascinating documentary about Soviet propaganda cartoons from the 1930's-1970's. It really gave me some background into what kind of comments the Soviet government would have wanted Ilf and Petrov to make about the USA. The comment about the American Dream seems like an especially common criticism to have made in that time. My picture comes from a dark, haunting cartoon in which a jobless boy finds work in a shooting gallery. The patron- a cigar smoking capitalist, of course- pays the boy more if he agrees to be used as a human target. The documentary is worth seeing, even if you're just curious about the art or the music used. 

Hitchhiking is so taboo these days that I can’t even imagine what it might have been like back in the day, walking along traffic and holding out your thumb. Everyone seems to know the picture of a guy smiling and opening a car door with a chainsaw held behind his back. I think I even saw a cartoon about it once.

Enter Hazel Leyton, a self-proclaimed “tough” girl who braves the road even when most men are “heels” (511). But when she says that a guy is a “heel” she doesn’t mean that he is a rapist. The most that these men did to her, it seemed, was try to flirt with her. And even then, once she felt the least bit threatened, she was able to ditch him and wander for a little bit until she got another ride. (At least that’s how our writer, Adamic, portrays it.) These days if a woman so much as walks around alone after nightfall, there’s talk of rape. Maybe it just wasn’t discussed as much then, but to me it seems like we’re either getting worse as a species or losing faith in ourselves as human beings. Or both.

 It takes real faith in humanity to be or to pick up a hitchhiker. You have to trust that they aren’t going to come at you with a chainsaw (or back in the day, that they aren’t a “Mann Act Racketteer” (498) –a prostitute hoping to defile the Mann Act by getting herself transported across state lines.) But from all that we have read; from the opening scene of Grapes of Wrath with Tom Joad’s taciturn reluctance to tell the truck driver anything, to Hazel saying that “Lotsa guys that pick me up want to know my story” (501), to all the writers traveling on the road in search for the Americans, the stories of the real people… It seems like it was an objective of the age, or at least the travelers of that age, to learn each other’s stories. Now we watch dozens of false realities on TV. These productions propose all the story with none of the threat. These are people who we never have to give a ride to, never have to talk to, even, but who we allow to drone on and on in our living rooms.

So could this story take place today? Tune in next week to REAL LIVE AMERICAN GIRL HITCHHIKERS: ARE THEY BAD OR HAVE THEY JUST HAD A HARD TURN OF LUCK? to find out. 
(ha ha)

Or that’s at least what Keith Windshuttle, author of Steinbeck’s Myth of the Okies would have us believe. 

The facts are pretty convincing too. Windshuttle debunks just about every fact written in Grapes of Wrath. He begins by letting us know that there was no dust bowl in Oklahoma, just a drought. Then he tears apart the Okie Exodus: it was about 70,000, not 200,000, and they had been traveling west for years. And the conditions were hardly that bad. Some even got a white little house on the edge of town.

Anything, everything; from the amount of family members to the length of the trip to California was proven false. Near the end of his diatribe against the dirty lying book, he makes this remark: “Why it became the story that defined the Great Depression for America is a question that still calls for an answer.”

What he forgot was that it’s still a darn good story.

The Grapes of Wrath is the gorgeously written tale of a family dissolving due to hard times. Even if you haven’t met anyone who is exactly like Ma Joad or Casey, the characters are all still knowable and lovable. The tale of their demise is not only enthralling, it is heart breaking. The book also follows similar lines as the Odyssey and Exodus. Who can resist the retelling of an old story?

Is it important if it’s true? Probably. Did Steinbeck intend to lie? I doubt it. To me, it seems like Steinbeck wrote about what he saw. If the farmhands said that 300,000 immigrants from the midwest were flooding California because of the dustbowl, I bet that’s what he wrote. Exaggeration always weaves its way into the telling of the tale. It makes it more interesting and exciting. Whereas statistics may tell you that, no “the Okie migration was a success story by almost any measure...Eighty-three percent of adult males were fully employed, a quarter in white-collar jobs and the rest evenly divided between skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled occupations. About twenty percent earned $2,000 or more a year,” the people Steinbeck was able to see and record in 1938-9 could have been in entirely different situations. As a human, you can only see a teency tiny zoomed in portion of the world. Statistics show certain facts while real, human expressions might show something very different. Steinbeck’s biggest mistake was not in telling the tale of the Joads; it was in his certainty that this was a much grander phenomenon than he was able to see.

Those who lived the Hooverville life, lead the traveling life. When a home in the ramshackle district was all that you could afford, you were bound to get cleared out by the police. And so you were also destined, doomed, to wander. 

Apart from the shantytowns described in The Grapes of Wrath, the best known source of these Depression icons were the cities. New York City itself was host to several of these communities, most notably in Central Park. An article in the New York Times explores this community, which burst up for the first time 1930 on what is now called “The Great Lawn,” but was then only a drained reservoir near Belvedere Castle. The article (published in 1993) paints New Yorkers as surprisingly kindly and sympathetic to the dispossessed. When the Hooverville inhabitants were arrested, it was with “apologies and good feelings on both sides,” and once a judge, “suspended the sentences of 22 unemployed men sleeping in Central Park -- apparently in various locations -- and gave each one $2 out of his own pocket.” The breezy relationship between the legally housed New Yorkers and those that lived in shanty towns was only really interrupted (says the article) by suspicions that they were only really “hobos” after all. Ha ha. 

Other articles don’t describe the Hooverville experience as quite so frictionless. Another famous shantytown in Seattle covered nine acres and was inhabited by over 1,200 people. They claimed their own government and even had a mayor (source). As the population continued to rise even into the early 40’s, the government took notice and established a “Shack Elimination Committee.” They classified the inhabitants as outsiders and claimed that it this whole homeless business was,“very unsightly to the people who are civic minded.” But the residents of the Hooverville kept on fighting, establishing a set of guidelines for sanitation, an address system, a postal service, and even a college. Their main opposition did not come from those concerned about pubic sanitation or safety, it was mostly for economic reasons asserted by the government and the city’s commercial clubs. Police Sergeant E.C. Griffin stated that the “entire situation [in Hooverville] is very grave as there is a possibility of the owners of these said shacks filing squatters rights upon this valuable property.” (source)

Finally, in 1941 the destruction of the great Hooverville began. The Seattle times reported that it was “conquered by prosperity.” (source)

 

As a man who was evacuated from the East River Colony in Manhattan said, "Nobody's askin' us where we're goin'. There's not a soul thinkin' about us" (source).

It wasn’t like anyone wanted to leave. Maybe it was a mass immigration to California, but none of the pilgrims were exactly willing. The way Steinbeck depicts it, they were all shuttered out by bank operatives. Although they had claims to the land by living there for three or four generations, a piece of paper declared that they were not the rightful owners. And when the dust bowl swirled up, the bank had the legal rights to boot them out.

Hopes of a Californian cornucopia spread, but not to everyone. Muley abandoned his family to live alone and hunted in his own homeland. He lives in a kind of reverie, prowling the town for memories like an “ol’ graveyard ghos’” (pg 51).
“I been goin’ aroun’ the places where stuff happened,” he says, explaining his life to Tom and Casey over a roasting jackrabbit, “Like there’s a place over by our forty; in a gully they’s a bush. Fust time I ever laid with a girl was there... So I went there an’ I laid down on the groun’, an’ I seen it all happen again. An’ there’s the place down by the barn where Pa got gored to death by a bull.... An’ I put my han’ right on that groun’ where that blood is still. An’ I seen my pa with a hole through his ches’...” (pg 51).

Other than reliving the glory of the town, his life is pretty pathetic. He eats jackrabbits and sleeps in the fields so that no one can find him and force him to leave. Meanwhile he grows more and more insane, and Casey predicts that, “He’ll kill somebody purty soon an’ they’ll run him down with dogs.” He adds that he can, “see it like a prophecy.” (pg 68). 

Grampa decides that he “ain’t never goin’” to California because, “This here’s my country. I b’long here. An’ I don’t give a goddamn if they’s oranges an’ grapes  crowdin’ a fella outa bed even. I ain’t a-goin’. This country ain’t no good, but it’s my country” (pg 111). This notion of home, of a place of belonging, is so strong with the all people leaving that it’s a wonder anyone is able to pick themselves up. But they are strong. And when Grampa dies on the road, they understand that his life was over “the minute you took ‘im off the place” (146). And so they pick up because they have to and they keep on going.

While some begin this “travel habit” for sightseeing, for families like the Joads it was only out of dire necessity. Out of desperation. And a part of them was probably wishing that they were roaming the abandoned houses with Muley, still dignified and full of piss and vinegar. 

Among the young urban bohemians (and regular ole poor folks) there is a movement of “freeganism;” essentially living off dumpster bounty. An anti-consumerist movement, freeganism promotes an environmentally healthy life style by reducing waste. This article in the New York Times depicts a freegan fest at NYU’s very own Third Avenue North after move out day. Flat screen TVs, paintings, organic laundry soap, and iPods were all salvaged. I personally have seen everything from poetry books to a treadmill left out on the curb in a wealthy neighborhood. Whereas Anderson was worried about the relative uselessness of his book, “you... cannot eat it, you cannot convert it into clothing. You may burn it but it will not much warm your house...” (xi), we’re tossing our books and electronics onto the street in favor of a newer version of an iPad or Kindle. 

In the same spirit, there is also an organization that has been around since the 80‘s called Food Not Bombs. They spend their time recovering food that would have otherwise been wasted to make vegan and vegetarian meals for anyone who might be hungry. 

Aren’t these people the selfsame anti-capitalist earth lovers that have been around since the 30’s? And well before, too? (Thoreau, anyone?)

Anderson states that “If the American writer chances to be a good deal of a wanderer, as I am, he is constantly struck by something. He becomes more and more convinced of the vast richness of America. Of the waste of wealth here, the waste of land, of potential power in coal and oil, in vast unneeded buildings. How our forests have been wasted, the power in our streams wasted, the land itself wasted” (xi). If only he got a peek into a New York City trash bin, or the haze of smog rising up from LA. 

A main difference between our freegans and the Woody Guthries is time and in their political titles. Freegans are partly a product of the environmental crisis and are most commonly associated with anarchism. Guthrie was a die hard Communist. But it must be noted that the Communists of the 30‘s existed long before the Cold War, back “when Communism was not the oppressor of the people, but the voice of the people” (Sanders).
Aside from obvious differences due to time period, the groups are strikingly similar.  Both believe in a reduction of painful class devisions. Both believe that no one should go hungry, and the rich should quit wasting. And both hate Fascists.