The Ghost Of Tom Joad…Dust-Bowl Broken-With The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts Exhibition On Families Conventional And Unconventional In Mind

The Ghost Of Tom Joad…Dust-Bowl Broken-With The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts Exhibition On Families Conventional And Unconventional In Mind

By Bart Webber

…the ghost of old Tom Joad followed their every footstep, followed their every mile in that broken old excuse for an automobile that sucked the life out of one of his progeny, Prescott Ayers by name, a wheat farmer by trade, huh, by professional except that goddam dust has eaten up that wheat turned it to dust too, turned it so bad Prescott like the Joads before him (and his) from up the road had taken that poor excuse for a car and hightailed it out of the barren Okie hills to head for the promise land wherever that might be and if wasn’t to be then he’d  just not have been buried in that fucking flatland anyhow. Yeah, Tom Joad who would have thought that the winds, the wicked heaven-sent winds, oh lord what did I do to deserve this, would have sent him on the road.

Got a West Coast guy, a guy named Johns Steinbeck, a writer out in the docks of sardine-smacked Monterey thinking about that dust, thinking about fleeing and how to get him the hell out before the whole world turns ash-can grey. Got another guy, an Okie brethren out of the reservation territories, out of the veil of tears, Woody Guthrie, a wild boy no question, to signing and humming about that brother Joad like he knew in his heart that going west was the best. Got another guy, a movie director, an oater by trade, John Ford,   out in mountebank Hollywood, Hollywood before Ed Ruscha, another Okie tramp, immortalized another setoff hill, thinking it might very well do to let the Saturday afternoon at the Bijou movie crowd see what stuff Mister Joad was made of, what Okie dust turned into out west. Unto the seventh generation, if you don’t believe me, making a Jersey guy, a fucking Jersey guy, used to singing about ’57 Chevy’s and the running kind walk the Highway 101 late at night looking across the arroyo skies for a sign of that father he never knew like something out of a Jack Kerouac novel. Jesus.        

…and Prescott Ayers, wheat farmer by professional and owner of a no excuse for a car except he (and his) had to get the hell out before he exploded and wound up in McAlister Prison himself all he got for his sullen efforts was a silly photograph poorly cropped from some Eastern city dame with a high-tail camera by the name of Dorothea Lange who gave his wife Matty a copy (one of the “and his” the others being the boy Lonny, girl Ella, and the girl Martha Jane-Prescott, Junior laid to rest before his second birthday eaten up by wind dust making Prescott damn the day he let Matty conceive him and damning the day he had decided that he wanted a large family to farm that wheat farm and pass on that land, that land that make him cry alone his own veil of tears cry). Matty and that goddam copy which she cherished all the way to Fresno and raisin pining away times as they headed west, headed clunker west in that no excuse for a car. Cherished, unknown to taciturn, no sentiment Prescott, and secretly passed on to Ella upon her death bed long after Prescott laid  his head down in raisin valley soil,  as long as she drew breathe and had a roof over her head.        

The photograph showing Prescott’s Matty all angular and care-worn, slightly slouching, hair not seeing washing or a beautician’s touch for many a mile (couldn’t that photo time since the money all got eaten up buying a new tire when that fixed to perdition tire he was eternally fixing finally gave its last breathe. Wondering, not some 16^th century Dutchman’s wondering (her people’s stock coming into New York Harbor, in the days when all you needed to do was show up on the docks to get into the freaking country and start looking for the streets paved with gold, not able to breath, city breath they from out in edam cheese land and farmers by trade, no, by profession, and heading west first to foreboding Kentucky coalmines and hard-scrabble leavings then across the Mississippi and no turning back into God’s country, Okie life), seeing what did that guy from Minneapolis, that F. Scott Fitzgerald who knew the distinction between rich and poor, call it, yes, the fresh green breast of land heading inland but where Lonny, Ella, Martha food was to be found for that night’s hell-broth stew.             

And that Lonny, Ella, Martha showing that mother angularity, and that haggard look like even a hell-broth stew would be a feast out in those broken down rutted roads not dreaming child dreams, not dreaming about those left behind (even they, even kids, know enough not to dream dust-bowl dreams) and just wishing that tire would hold up some miles and they with fatty meat could get acquainted. No fresh green breast of land to wound their dreams all to hell. Funny, Lonny destined to be an alienated youth in the post-World War II world firing up big hot rod engines out in the deserted desert roads, chicken run roads, east of Fresno and crashing his dreams in a 1949 Hudson all shiny and bright. Funny, star-struck, endlessly star-struck Ella, driving mother Matty crazy would be serving them off the arm in Phil’s Diner, turning part-time tricks for truckers to pull her own brood over the from hunger hump. Funny, Martha a dreary housewife living with husband and two kids in a ranch house (fake-Spanish design all the rage) on converted farm land wondering why the hell the whole tribe had headed west.

….yeah, the ghost of Tom Joad.