Ah, Oklahoma...Where the wind comes sweepin down the plain blowing away just about
every job opportunity you can imagine. Sound depressing? Well, yeahit's the Great
Depression Youd think that getting out of prison would
be a happy occasion, full of cake and clothes shopping. Mine was a bummer, though. There wasn't even
a surprise party, because my folks got kicked off their land to make room for job-eliminating
tractors.
I found my peeps at my uncles house, planning
a West coast road trip to get jobs, and maybe a nice tan. Everybody was there: Ma and Pa and Uncle John,
and Grandma and Grandpa, and my little sister and my pregnant sister, and my three brothers
and one brother-in-law, and my best buddy, Reverend Casey. Apparently this was gonna be one crowded car
ride to California. Good thing we stocked up on barf bags.
After some bonding and pig-slaughtering, everybody piled into the Joad-mobile.
Grandpa didnt
want to leave, but Ma slipped him a Mickey, and we were on our way. Doping Grandpa might not have been the best
idea, because he sort of died afterwards. On the bright side, I finally scored the window
seat! Route 66 was a real drag. If you werent
out desperately looking for work, you were probably getting the runaround from a cheap
boss, a greedy mechanic, or a scary policeman.
Plus, folks were telling us that California
wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And it didnt help that we had to pay just
to rough it on the side of the road. Some smart guy cop forced us to leave one
campground because we were Okies, and I'm pretty sure he didn't mean that we were okey
dokey. The worst part, though, was when Ma dropped
the bomb that Grandma had been dead for days.
Ma hadn't told us, because she thought we'd
get pulled over. So basically we were driving around with a corpse in the car. Thanks, Mom.
Oh, it gets worse. One worker told us that the Move to Cali campaign was just a
ruse to stuff the state with cheap labor.
Fight the authorities, and you'd end up blacklisted
or dead. For example: some poor shmuck in our camp
tried to stand up for himself and ask for a contract, and the police started shooting
at him. During the scuffle I tripped a trigger-happy
cop, which is probably a violation of my parole, and good old Casey took the blame to save
his fellow man. What a guy! So all in all, things werent exactly going
according to plan.
By the time the angry, drunken mob arrived to trash the camp, I was
definitely having second thoughts about this move. Too bad I couldnt just skip town like Rose
of Sharon's baby-daddy. Luckily, I found Reverend Casey again, and
I was really stoked! Aaaaand then he was killed in an anti-union scuffle. I lost my head a little after that, and axed
a guy.
Literally. Definitely a parole violation that time. After the drama it was back to the daily grind,
only this time I had to be stealthy about it, to avoid Jail 2.0. Rose of Sharon lost her baby, which was another
tearjerker, but she did find a second calling: breast-feeding starving men.
Man, what a downer.
Somebody tell Steinbeck to put me in a comedy next time!.
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