The Grapes of Ruth

The Dustbowl.  The Dirty Thirties.  The Great Depression. Whatever you call it, the economic and ecological catastrophe that destroyed the livelihoods of many of our parents and grandparents over eighty years ago, haunts us to this day.  

For those who've never heard about it, the stock market crash of 1929, led to worldwide bankruptcies. Almost overnight, businesses and factories in both Canada and the US shutdown, closing their doors to workers.  Families lost their homes. Shopkeepers no longer had shoppers, and soon lost their businesses, putting more people on the street.  This was before government assistance, and those who lost their jobs, were on their own.      

At the same time, the worst man-made ecological disaster in North American history, turned the prairies, from Canada, down to the hard-hit Southern US states of Oklahoma and Texas, into a dust bowl. 

In the 1920's, combine harvesters and small gas powered tractors, made it possible for farmers to convert grassland into cropland.  It was called The Great Plough-up, and removed the deep rooted grasses which normally would have held moisture, and stabilized the soil during droughts. Then, severe drought in 1934, '36 and '39 led to blinding dust storms, which removed the topsoil from farm fields. Skies were black with dust.  Crops were lost.  Banks foreclosed on farms. Families moved - mostly westward, to British Columbia, and California.

     

Although they were not in the dust bowl, my Mum knew poverty.   Life was so hard that almost everyone in her tiny, impoverished village near Montebello, Quebec was moved to Northern Quebec, to homestead and establish a mining town. The men went first, and the women and children followed a year later.  My Mum was the eldest of a family that would eventually number ten children, and she left school at a young age, so that she could help out the family.  On her own, she learned to speak, read and write in English.  

On the Westcoast, my grandfather thought life would be better if he moved his wife and son to Ireland.  They sold everything, and moved across the country, and across the ocean to his birthplace. Things were worse.  A year later, they returned to BC, and survived the remaining years of the Depression by being as self sufficient as possible, growing their own fruits and vegetables, and raising chickens. That my Dad was one of few men of his generation to go to University, is a testament to his commitment and determination.

My parents didn't talk very much about their childhoods.  They did instill a spirit of generosity, and a pride in self that had nothing to do with material wealth.        

Sanora Babb left her Oklahoma town for the fast paced life as a big city reporter in Los Angeles. When the stock market crashed, she lost her job, and was homeless for a time.  By 1938, she was working for the US Farm Security Administration. Travelling with her boss, Tom Collins, they would let migrant workers know about programmes which would help them.  She interviewed workers from the Midwest, and began taking notes, which she hoped to use for a book.  Without her permission, Collins gave her personal notes to a San Francisco news reporter, who was writing a series of articles on the plight of the workers, The Harvest Gypsies.

The San Francisco reporter spent months living with migrant workers, even travelling with an Oklahoma family, on their journey to find work in California.  He too was writing a book.  John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning 1939 book, The Grapes of Wrath was an instant American classic, and led to a Nobel Prize for Steinbeck.  Steinbeck dedicated the book to Collins.

Babb's publishers told her there was no room for another book on the same subject.  Her book, Whose Names are Unknown, was finally published in 2004, a year before she died.   

There's a scene in The Grapes of Wrath, where food is being destroyed to keep prices high. Steinbeck writes, "...in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.  In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy for the vintage..."

This Labour Day weekend, the start of the Fall harvest season, my thoughts are with those migrant workers in both Canada and the US, who work long, hard days to put food on our table.

My thoughts are also with the hundreds of thousands of Canadians and Americans who have been displaced by massive fires and historic floods.  Those of us with a roof over our heads, and food on our table are called upon to help in whatever way we can.


Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.