The Second Great Okie Migration - Long Read

[EssOne]

(Explanation: I have a little bit of history in my background, having been a child of the Great Okie Migrations to California in the 1930's and 40's. Not too long ago I was encouraged by my family to write it down so the younger kids would someday learn what their grandparents had gone through to escape the horrible poverty of the plains states back then and provide them with a decent life. So I did, and even though it isn't the usual Gun Forum fodder, I thought it deserved better than to be bottled up forever in my Word file. Y'all are a gracious and patient bunch, so I thought you might like to take a look at it. I hope I didn't wear out my welcome posting it here at TGO and I hope you find it interesting. It was a unique bit of contemporary American history that may just be repeated in reverse if the water situation in California gets any worse.) 

 

Life during the first 50 years of the 20th century in Oklahoma was miserably hard.For the common Oklahoman the only work available was brutally difficult subsistence farming of worn out, rented land which they could never hope to own. Farm machinery consisted of horse and mule-drawn plows, and fertilization of crops was expensive to the point of being out of the question. Water was drawn from wells by rope and bucket, which made watering family gardens very hard and irrigation of crops impossible. Pest control meant that the children in the family walked up and down the rows of stunted cotton, picking the boll weevils off of the plants and throwing them into a bucket. The

bucket was then dumped into a fire at the end of the row and the walking and picking began all over again.  The cotton  that survived was picked by hand for starvation wages. The men of the family took bucksaws, axes, and horse-drawn wagons to the river bottoms and cut their year’s supply of fire wood and cook wood every year, a process that entailed at least two weeks of almost cruel, sweltering labor. The winters were brutally cold, the summers brutally hot and humid, and tornados

were an ever present danger during the working seasons.

 

 

The old prairie houses were cold, drafty, leaky, and most had neither electricity nor insulation. When a family went to bed with a roaring fire in the potbellied wood stove in the middle of the house, winter temperatures on the plains greeted them in the morning with a sheet of ice on all of the water and milk in the house. The common Oklahoman’s poetic description of the state’s winter weather was that It was “clear as a bell, cold as hell, and damnedest frost that ever fell.”

 

 Until the late 1930’s and even into the 1940’s lighting was provided by candles and kerosene lanterns. Refrigeration was by blocks of ice if one lived in town, but nonexistent otherwise.  Owning an automobile was reasonably common, but owning one that wasn’t a falling-down jalopy being held together with bailing wire and prayer was not. Education was badly frustrated by the constant need these families had for their children’s labor on their farms. A tremendous number of young Oklahomans of that era made do without a high school education, and many even found it difficult to progress beyond the eighth grade.

 

 While life on the farm was tough on everyone, my mother’s family had it worse than most. Mom never owned more than one outer garment at a time in her life until she

married my dad at the age of eighteen. Her school dress was also her work dress and church dress. When it needed washing, it was washed on a scrub board in a tub of water with homemade lye soap. She had to wear a pair of her brother’s bib overalls until it dried. Sewing machines came very hard for Oklahoma farm families of that era, so her mother made even the family’s undergarments with a pair of scissors and a needle and thread. The material of choice, of course, was the ever-present flour sack.

 

 As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, the Great Depression made it even worse. Simple poverty was overtaken by desperation and a real question about whether one could survive at all.  My dad once told me that in 1932 his family’s farm produced 52 bales of cotton, which only brought a gross profit of a nickel a pound. By the time the rent on the land was subtracted, and the gin fees, hired help, grocery and seed bills were paid, there was only enough money left to buy each of the five children in the family a new pair of shoes or a new coat, but not both. These were the days when blackbirds, opossums, ground hogs, and all sorts of small animals suddenly became quite edible, even desirable, and corn meal mush was akin to a grand feast. When a laying hen stopped being a laying hen, it quickly became a stewing hen. Often the Okies’ beloved milk gravy could only stay on the table by becoming water gravy, and then only if one could afford the flour or meal needed to make it. The most desperate times came to the Dust Bowl country, where for a time families were known to have subsisted on lard and bread alone.

 

The Great Depression found its way into my family in 1938.  After more than thirty years of incredibly difficult farming, the family had no choice but to “go bust”

and “move to town.” Old, worn out farm implements can only be repaired so many times, and theirs were long overdue for the scrap heap. Having swallowed their pride and

sold everything they owned, they worked at anything and everything they could find to hold body and soul together for the next four years.

 

This pattern was repeated thousands of times in prewar Oklahoma and the other plains states, and set the stage for what I call the “Second Great Okie Migration.”

But before we go there, let’s back up a few years to the “First Great Okie Migration.”

 

During the 1930’s, almost 200,000 Oklahomans and other plains folks fled the region’s poverty and its Dust bowl for the farm fields of California. This was the great Okie 

migration that formed the basis for John Steinbeck’s award winning novel “The Grapes of Wrath.”   

 

But not everyone left quite yet. Many realized that, despite their dire straits, the farm fields of the West only offered an improvement in fortunes to those who had lost 

everything and had nothing left to lose. Decent housing was impossible to find, much less afford. The labor was just as hard, and the wages just as low. For those outside 

the Dust Bowl who still had a roof over their heads and food in the house, the move didn’t seem to be all that worthwhile. 

 

But events in Europe and the Far East would soon change that. 

 

The famous and desolate U.S Highway 66, scene of the great Okie migrations of the 1930,s and 1940's.

 

The“Second Great Okie Migration” began with the nation’s mobilization for World War II in 1940. War industries with good paying jobs sprang up all up over the west coast, and destitute Midwestern farm families flocked to them by the thousands.They got there any way they could – Greyhound busses, sputtering old cars, and even by the outstretched thumb alongside the highways and byways. Enterprising men with decent automobiles were issued extra gasoline ration stamps and allowed to hire out and drive workers from the Midwest to the west coast war plants. Henry J. Kaiser even sent passenger trains to the major population centers of Texas in order to take people to California to work in his San Francisco ship yards. Not surprisingly, the population of California increased by a whopping 56% during World War II.

 

1939 Ford pickup

 

By the middle of 1942 things had indeed changed. Even the Oklahoma holdouts understood the promise of a better life that was now being offered by the west

coast war industries. Among them were my parents. One night at a dance in Wapanucka, Oklahoma they encountered a man who was

operating a ferry service to California with his pickup truck. They signed up then and there. I had to chuckle when my Dad told me of this meeting years later. He said: “Y’know son, I had a good bankroll all saved up, but when that ol’ boy said he wanted twenty five dollars apiece to bring me and your mother to California, it like’ta broke me!”

 

1941 Chevy pickup

 

And so off they went. The “ol’ boy” had a fairly new pickup to which he had added bows over the bed and then covered them with a tarp in the fashion of the Conestoga

wagons of old. He had bolted two easy chairs in the small bed for the ladies. His cargo capacity was two couples, each with a suitcase or two, which the (pregnant) wives had to climb over for the entire trip. The pickups of that era weren’t much larger than a modern day Dodge Dakota, which made for a very cramped cab when all three men climbed in. Worse, the old pickups had a floor shift, which one of the unlucky men had to straddle. The wartime speed limit throughout the country was 35 miles per hour. Gasoline cost twelve cents a gallon. The trip was 1,700 miles on U.S. Highway 66 across the western desert of the United States in the middle of summer. It took five days and five nights of miserably hot nonstop driving to make it to Santa Paula, California.

 

This '41 Chevy bed is typical of the tiny bed into which two pregnant women and the entre luggage load had to fit.

 

They arrived in mid-June, 1942 with just enough money to live for a week, but quickly found jobs paying better wages than they had ever imagined.  Starting

wages for common labor in the Southern California war industries was $1.00 per hour, four times the Oklahoma labor rate of 25 cents per hour. My folks thought they had died and gone to Heaven. After hearing the good news their hard pressed Oklahoma relatives wasted no time in moving west, almost en masse. Very few of them ever looked back.

 

My parents wading in the surf of Ventura, California on July 19, 1942, less than a month after their arrival.

 

From that point forward the “Second Great Okie Migration” knew no bounds. It literally spread into a nationwide migration to the Golden State that ultimately resulted in the state’s population exceeding thirty million people by the 21st century.  And it all began with old, smoky, backfiring convoys of down n’ out Okie refugees looking for honest work. They memorialized their plight with a light hearted 1947 hit song that offended a lot of folks, but told it like it was. It was entitled “Dear Okie” and went like this:

 

 “Dear Okie, if you see Arkie

 

Tell ‘im Tex got a job for him out

in Californy

 

Pickin’ up prunes, squeezing oil out

of olives”

 

 

 

“Dear Okie, if you see Arkie

 

Tell ‘im Tex got a job for him out

in Californy

 

Rakin’ up gold, playing fiddle in

the Follies”

 

 

 

“Now, he’ll be lucky if he finds a

place to live

 

But there’s orange juice fountains

flowing for those kids of his”

 

 

 

“So, Dear Okie, if you see Arkie

 

Tell ‘im Tex got a job for him out

in Californy

 

Diggin’ oil wells, all he needs is a

shovel”………………………….

 

Having read this brief story, I trust that the reader will forgive me for becoming irate when I hear inner city demonstrators shouting for the government to “send

us jobs!”  I’m sure you can imagine why I feel that way. You can also understand why I call myself an Okiefornian. I was born in California five months

after my 18 year old mother stepped out of the bed of the “Conestoga” pickup truck from Wapanucka, Oklahoma.

 

 Epilogue

 

 

My mother lived from 1923 until 1996. After spending the war years working at the Port Hueneme Navy Base, she spent most of the rest of her life in Ventura,

California. There she raised three children and worked for 21 years as a saleslady at the East Main Street Sears store. Her favorite comment about Oklahoma was “I didn’t lose anything back there I’m in a big hurry to go back and find.”   Even so, she faithfully drove "back home" over 30 times to see her parents. I’m quite sure she made at least 20 of those 1,700 mile trips before discovering what a motel was.

 

 

My dad lived from 1910 until 1990.  He too spent the war years working at the Port Hueneme Navy Base. After the war he spent his career as a Senior Inspector

for County Agriculture Departments. He was very fond of saying that California had been wonderful to him, but Oklahoma had tried

to work him to death. He often lamented that “You couldn’t get a cool breeze back there to save your life.” By the time he retired, his position had been reclassified from Senior Inspector to Agricultural Biologist, and required a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology. He took quiet pride in training young Agricultural Biologists to

replace him when he neared retirement – little did they know their mentor only had an eighth grade education.

 

ADDENDUM:

 

Please don’t waste your time looking for a “Second Great Okie Migration” in the history books. The name is just my take on a particular period of American life that

meant so much to my family. I am immensely proud to have been raised by people of such character and resilience. It has been a rare privilege to tell just a small part of

their story. As the Okies say: “They done good.”

 

Wapanucka, Oklahoma still exists today, but barely. The population of this tiny southeastern Oklahoma town was roughly 2,000 people in 1942 but has slipped to

no more than 400 by current estimates. A cousin and I visited there in 1981 and again in 2006 and found that the buildings on its main street were abandoned

and on the verge of collapse. Only a two room motel and a convenience store remained. We found much of the population to be living in dilapidated mobilhomes

and old, tattered houses scattered around the area.

 

Ventura, California, on the other hand has done exactly the opposite. Its population in 1942 was only 12,000 people. But its location on a prime piece of Southern

California’s coast along with being within 50 miles of Los Angeles has drastically increased its population over the years.  Current population figures put it

at 106,400, an increase of 6,400 people since the 2000 census alone. It is an incredibly vibrant, lovely city. 

 

Santa Paula, California is a quaint city of some 30,091 people nestled in the coastal foothills of the Santa Clara Valley and is known as the "Citrus Capital of the World." It is nine miles inland from Ventura. My parents arrived there in June of 1942 when it had fewer than 5,000 people. They lived out the war years in Santa Paula.

 

“Port Hueneme” is correctly pronounced “Port Wy-nee-mee.” – with the accent on the middle syllable. It is from the California Chumash Indian dialect. The Navy Base there is more formally known as USNCBC Port Hueneme, or U.S. Navy Construction Battalion Center Port Hueneme. It is the home of the Navy’s famous Seabees.

 

If anyone would like to hear a great rendition of “Dear Okie,” my favorite is this recording by Hank Thompson, done in 1968. It adds real flavor to the story.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRfctSGwPko

 

Well, that's about it. The original Okie migrants are all gone now and all that remains is for their kids to tell their stories while they still can. I hope I've done them justice. After all, they were a very unique part of "The Greatest Generation." Thanks for listening.

 

EssOne

Edited June 13, 2015 by EssOne

[A.J. Holst]

Excellent read, thanks for posting!

[bigun]

Thanks for sharing your story. I enjoyed it and reminds me of stories my dad told of the depression.

[buck1032]

Yes thanks for sharing your story. Sadly many like it from times past are just gone. So good on you for getting it recorded for your family.

[TNWNGR]

Great story!

[Pete123]

I'm really glad you recorded this and enjoyed reading it.  Any of you that haven't read his writing about his time in the military should check it out at http://www.tngunowners.com/forums/topic/88428-days-of-old/?hl=essone.

[10-Ring]

I enjoyed the read, thanks for sharing!

[Monkeyman2500]

Great read EssOne. Thanks. Your dad reminds me of my grandfather. It's funny that with his 7th grade education he would be considered a mechanical engineer by today's standards.

[Chazmr]

Great story and fascinating history lesson.

 

Your parents (like my grandparents and parents) clearly came from a generation that just did whatever they had to do to survive, without expecting anyone else to take care of them.

Good lessons there for a bunch of folks today.

 

Thanks for sharing your story with us!

[WindHawk]

Great piece of family / US history EssOne.  Thanks for sharing it.

 

I realize more each day what we lost by not researching and recording our family's history while those that lived it were still here. For some reason many peoples' interest in family seems to develop later in our lives.  For those that still have family elders with you I strongly encourage you to follow EssOne's example and save your history while the knowledge is still available.  Sure wish that I had.

[Grand Torino]

Hell of a story....reminds me of stories my mom and dad used to tell us. The good old days weren't always so good.

[Chazmr]

. . . The good old days weren't always so good.

 

About 10 years ago some of the great grandkids asked my grandmother (she was in her early 90's at the time) what life, especially Christmas was like when she was a child (she was born in 1912).  She said she tried not to remember those days because they were so hard!  This while the great grandkids were opening so many Christmas presents they couldn't even keep up with what they received.  Most of us really have no idea what it was like back then.

[raildog]

Good read and thank you for sharing