Short and sad. But it happened.

Whose Names Are Unknown
by by Sanora Babb, Lawrence R. Rodgers

I never read The Grapes Of Wrath, but I was suprised to learn that this book was written in 1939 but not published because Random House felt that Steinbeck had already said it all! What a feeble, short-sighted notion.  Recovered from obscurity and published in 2006 by the University of Oklahoma press, this is a worthwhile, first-hand account of a national disaster--happening in person's lives.  All of the prejudice and pain, foolishness and greatness, of an entire nation, wrapped up in a few short pages.  It deserved to be published long ago.

It was pretty brave to pile all your belongings in a car and head across the desert to compete for a job at a farm laborer wage.  But more interesting to me was what came before--the waves of dust, whole days and even weeks of unending dust.  Chickens couldn't scratch in two feet of heavy dirt.  That dirt was probably highly fertile topsoil, but without rain, it couldn't be farmed--it only smothered.

I wonder if there's a story of the people who didn't go west, but instead chose to go back east or south?  Did any of the Okies end up in Florida, Georgia, or East Texas?  I'd love to hear their stories as well.

Another question--was this occurring at the same time as the great migration of southern sharecroppers moved north, to the factories of Chicago and Ohio?  I'll check in a bit.