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.       

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- Down and Out In The American Hobo Night- With Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost Of Tom Joad” In Mind

… he, Charles River Blackie, using his road moniker now that he was back on the bum, as he turned up the frayed collar of his threadbare denim jacket against the unexpectedly cold early October desert night, sprayed his eyes around the sitting night camp fire being reignited by Boomer Jack, and shuddered, no cold shake off shudder although he had enough of that in his time, but some unspoken, also un-thought of response to a fear that was creeping into his bones. Something about this Indio camp fire was just not right, just had the wrong smell, and no he did not mean the man unwashed smell, nothing to that anymore, he had lost all sense of that rank smell or not rank smell long ago, not did the smell of cheap whiskey, or of low- down cast-off food being olio-brothed on a big pot on a second camp fire, no this was fear smell, bad happening smell like happens every once in a while out in a desolate railroad jungle when just the wrong combination of hoboes, tramps, and bums work their way into trouble. (Indio, by the way, out by the high California desert before the Sierras, out by an underside of a bridge an of old Southern Pacific railroad route, if you need to know, don’t look for it unless you are headed there, properly headed there with frayed clothing, some Sally second or third hand stuff, mismatched so no one would mistake you for a poser for Gentlemen’s Quarterly, or something like that, maybe a little cheap wine or rotgut whisky wobbly to declare you are brethren.)

Maybe it was that the denizens of this camp had set up their sitting camp fire early, early before the sun set and he could see, see clearly the pug-ugly faces of each individual man sitting around the circle. Hard men with hard chilling eyes, hard men who had not had a woman’s touch to soften them since about mother cradle time (unlike him, who had just gotten through, for about the eighth time, he had stopped counting, exact counting, after a couple once he got wise to the way things were between them and always between them, his thing with Susie after he just couldn’t take that nine to five white picket fence existence she had plotted out for them and so was not woman hungry, not yet), hard men who had the snarl of men who had done some hard ancient time, felony time, busting rock, or planting fields, or putting down road courtesy of some state penal authority (his own legal transgressions, vag, trespassing, loitering, being ugly in an open place, drunk, some small larceny stuff, the “clip” they called it in oceanside Hull working class neighborhood corner boy days, long past, had been of a small enough order that he was usually just cell-bound over night, a couple of nights, and then let out).

Maybe it was those dark stone eyes heathen going back ten thousand years to when they confronted a hostile natural world, and won for a time injuns who had made their camp here after the big Intertribal, over in Gallup, over around Red Rock, back east in New Mexico in late summer and were constantly affronting everybody, drunk, whiskey drunk, with their theory that all this land was theirs and therefore all gringos, all whites, should be grateful that they were allowed on this sacred ancient burial land, including the brethren here at Indio. He had seen fights all over the West, drunkenfights, sober fights, one against five and five against one fights, and serious cut-ups, knives, razors, whip chains if available, over that proposition.

And just maybe his fear was fueled by something Susie said, something that night anyway he feared she might have been right on, that the road had died, that friendly road where they, he and she, had happenstance met in sunnier times, in times when hitchhiking was just like waiting at a bus stop for the next Volkswagen minibus or painted converted yellow brick school bus to pass, had died long ago and the remnants left on that scattered road were now too dangerous for part -time gentlemen hoboes afraid to settle down. As he sat, sat kind of off to himself but close enough to get some flame warmth, he still did not like the omens that night and as the fire’s embers brightened he thought back to other camps, and other times.

Back to that first camp, that first camp by the old abandoned Boston and Maine railroad over in Revere back in Massachusetts when after his break-up with his first wife he had been unceremoniously (and legally) kicked out of that mortgaged house of theirs, and the camp where he first picked up his Charles River Blackie moniker from Black River Whitey who took him under his wing. That camp had been softened up by a couple of runaway boys, just boys, maybe sixteen or seventeen, who seeking a life of crime or a life away from some troubled home life, had stumbled into the camp and a couple of old ‘bos had made them their “girls,” protecting them, but passing them around to the other men as need be so there was not the cutthroat woman hunger that he felt was about to explode among the men that night. In those days too, Black River Whitey, an old anarchist and old Wobblie (Industrial Workers Of The World, IWW), who had been out in the railroad jungles of the west, the working man hard drinking hard fighting and hard shooting of need be strike-bound west, kept things in check, kept a certain social order to keep the rough edges in check. And was tough enough to make his word stick, no questions asked, none after Big Red (an old communist from about 1932 who kept talking about what he was going to do when they really went at it, class against class, in the near future) went down in a heap after Whitey cut him up like a steak when he tried some fag rough stuff with the “girls” one afternoon.

And too there was always a stray dog or two around that camp, Laddy and Queenie he remembered, to make everyone laugh as they adjusted to the soft hobo life (soft for them, the dogs, and they were kept in virtually royal splendor while the camp would go without). But most of all he remembered how Jimmy One Shoe (he always seemed to be missing one, or had two different ones) used to sing on his old beat up guitar (although don’t touch it, believe him don’t touch it. He had seen Jimmy knife gash a guy for just such folly) about every railroad song ever written, and about all of the American songbook (before his love of drink got the better of him One Shoe had been a folk performer of some minor note down in the Village in the 1950s, according to Whitey anyway).So when any trouble, whiskey or wine- soaked trouble began he would go into some old Phoebe Snow song, a song about some long ago lost love that didn’t work out after a while but the guy still carried the torch, and every guy (even him with that damn first wife) would get kind of wistful and weepy before the fire’s flames.

And then he thought back, thought back to his first days out on the road, the hitchhike road, that summer of love (no, not the famous one in1967 out in San Francisco, later, but still in California, further south down LaJolla way toward Mexico). The days when all you had to do on certain highways (almost all of California and up the coast, Boston to Washington, Maine to the border, Ann Arbor, Madison, Denver, not Arizona or Connecticut though , jesus no) was stand there alone (sometimes with a sparkle woman to improve your chances, especially if it looked like you were just travelling together not coupled ) and some Volkswagen minibus or ex-yellow brick road school bus now painted all the colors of the universe would come by and pick you up). And you would have your pick of Cosmic Muffin, Sunny Ray, Be-Bop Betty, Sunshine Sue and about a million other road moniker women; if that was your thing (he had met that first wife, then called Moonbeam Magic, “on the bus,” and later Susie too ). If it wasn’t, then why bother going out there (if your thing was your own sex he didn’t know but that was cool too, if that was your kick). You would have your pick of drugs too, mainly weed, ganja, out on the coast with that direct line south to sunny Mexico (if you didn’t get caught, otherwise the bastinado forever he heard). And if some injustice reared its head there was always a flash demonstration to keep you busy. He, being a righteous man, or at least a man in tune with the ethos of the new thing they were trying to put together , a new world, would always stick himself out front on those days when a brother was down on his luck, or a sister was in need. But mainly it was drugs, sex, and of course rock and rock, rock and roll until the cows came home. And until that ebb came, that downer to use the language of the day the road was a beautiful place to hang your hat. Then some left the road, but if it was in your blood, you were stuck, stuck like he was that night.

He looked again at those hard faces around the fire as the light around them turned starless black. He resolved right then and there that if he made it through the night alive he would slip out of camp before dawn, get down the road, and get that fear washed out …

The Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck Unchained

BOOK REVIEW

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, Random House, New York, 1998

Oddly, I first read John Steinbeck's classic tale of the 1930's depression, Grapes of Wrath, as a result of listening to Woody Guthrie's also classic Dustbowl Ballads. In that album Woody sings/narrates the trials and tribulations of the Joad family as they got the hell out of drought-stricken Oklahoma and headed for the land of milk and honey in California. After listening to that rendition I wanted to get the full story and Steinbeck did not fail me. His tightly-woven story stands as a very strong exposition of the plight of rural Americans as they tried to make sense of a vengeful God, unrelenting Nature and the down-side of the American dream. For those who have seem Walker Evans's and other photographers pictures of the Okies, Arkies, etc. of the period this is the story behind those forlorn, if stoic, faces.

The story line is actually very simple. The land in Oklahoma was played out, the banks nevertheless were pressing for payment or threatening foreclosure and for the Joads, as for others, time had run out. In the classic American tradition they pulled up stakes and headed west to get a new start. With great hopes and no few illusions they set out as a family for the sunny and plentiful California of their dreams. Their struggle along the way is a modern day version of the struggles of the old Westward heading wagon trains-including the causalities. But, that is not the least of it.

Apparently they had not read Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis that the frontier was gone- the land was taken. The bulk of the story centers of what happened when they get to the golden land-and it is not pretty. Day labor, work camps, strike action, murder, and mayhem-you know, California, the real California of the day. Not the Chamber of Commerce version. In short, as Woody sang, no hope if you ain't got the do re mi.

Grapes of Wrath was made into a starkly beautiful film starring a young Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. On a day when you are not depressed it is a film you want to see, if only for its photographic quality. So here is the list. Listen to Woody sing the tale. Watch Henry Fonda as he acts it out. And by all means read Steinbeck. He had an ear for the 1930's struggle of the Okies and their ilk as they hit California. What happened to those people later and their influence on California culture and what happened to those who didn't make it are chronicled by others like Howard Fast, Hunter Thompson and Nelson Algren. But for this period your man is Steinbeck.