Muley Graves Survived
by Glenda Shepard
The Joads and 2.5 million other Oklahomans and Midwesterners left the dust bowl for California. Grapes of Wrath chapter 19 “And then the dispossessed were drawn west—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out.”
But some stayed. Muley Graves, a neighbor of the Joad family, tells Tom in chapter 6, “I'll be aroun’ till hell freezes over. There ain't nobody can run a guy named Graves outa this country. “ The Grapes of Wrath moves out on Route 66, now Interstate 40, to tell the story Steinbeck knew needed telling, the plight of migrant farm workers.
When I taught The Grapes of Wrath in my junior English class, one of the options I offered students was to interview older residents of the area, usually grandparents and great-grandparents, about how they survived the dust bowl days. The students came back with recordings of the Muley Graves of Stanton County. Like Muley, those farmers weren't going to let anyone run them off. My students brought back from those interviews a sense of awe for their ancestors. I got students engaged in the book!
Years later, I read The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. Here were the stories of all the Muley Graves. When the price of wheat had sunk below the cost of production, in No Man's Land, the Oklahoma Panhandle, “ the Folker family learned to use their wheat for something in every meal. They ground it for a harsh breakfast cereal, sifted it to make flour, blended it in a porridge with rabbit meat at dinner.” p. 104-5 And the Lowerys, with bare fields and canning tumbleweeds, thought why not leave? But Ezra Lowery said, “I'm not gonna put my family in a soup line. Not me. We have food here and a roof over our heads.”p163 Others without food waited in line at Sheriff HI Barrick's office for roadkill. A third option: steal food. P. 165
My maternal and paternal grandparents moved into Southwest KS decades before the Great Depression. They proved up homesteads and grew enough wheat to at least subsist. When the rains grew scarce, and the crops failed, they weren't turned off their land by a land company or a bank. Why or how they were able to stay is lost to me.
Both my parents lived through dust storms that were seen as just part of life. Dad had no problem with a little dirt (he called it grit) in his fried eggs. Mom knew how to make cornstarch pasted strips to keep dust from filtering through window sills.
Gradually soil conservation practices changed farming enough to hold the dirt on the ground. In grade school, students made yearly soil conservation posters emphasizing contour farming, shelter belts, and cover crops. Muley Graves’ stubbornness lived on as the Dust Bowl rested, and then began to sustain life again.
I'm Glenda Shepard and this is my Radio Readers BookByte for The Grapes of Wrath, part of the 2626 spring book read for HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.
