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The ending was horrible, wasn't it. The movie didn't show the ending in the book.
In reality, most of the Okies did better in California than the book depicts.
If anything, the book tells us we should always help our fellow man, even if they look like white trash or if they are of another race or if they have accents and dress different from our own, because they are probably good people who are victims of circumstances they can't control.
The disaster that struck the Gulf Coast 2 years ago was a lot like the depression days in some ways. Katrina was said to have caused the largest population displacement since the depression. At least most people helped the hurricane evacuees. A lot of people, though, blame the hurricane victims and don't want any of their tax money spent on relief.
Yes, the book does leave a message for helping our fellow man. It is amazing to me how people can treat others so badly. So bad that they send them out to die and no one pays any attention to them until they do die and need to be removed. I thought that those in New Orleans were at least helped. It seems to me that no one was there for the Okies, and then even though the President made it so people could be put on relief they had to be in one place for a year. Well, they had to keep moving to find work, so how could relief help at all?
The book also left me with realizing how much I need to always count my blessings, but to remember that it could happen to anyone again. So my feeling was to not spend so much like I do.
This was many years ago, but my first mother-in-law was very poor. She had 3 boys to raise by herself. She would go and buy the cheapest foods. I remember one day my husband to be walked into the house and said, "What? Beans and potatoes again." and his mom said, "No, potatoes and beans." That is what she cooked most days along with stewed tomatoes mixed with bread and sugar and warmed up. I studied her ways, but I lost sight of them. When I was cutting up spinach today I thought how she and even those in the book would actually eat every bit of it, while I was throwing away the stems and bad leaves.
It didn't seem to me that in the book they blamed the victims as much as they feared them and wanted them out of their lives, and that they just wanted to take advantage of them. I was reading the introduction and whoever wrote it said that in the 80s they began to blame the victims for being poor.
Last edited by Mattie Jo; 09-24-2007 at 05:05 PM..
I was thinking about the people in other states who are facing foreclosure. If they lose their homes, what will they do?
We were talking with a former Edmond resident last night about how much Edmond has grown. He said half of the growth was from people from California. He told about one AA guy who had moved to California from OK as a young guy, worked for Wal Mart for 30 years, sold his house in California, and now has a nice house in OK & enough money to retire on.
I like to eat stewed tomatoes with bread & sugar. Beans & cornbread we cook a lot. My husband's family lived in the country. If you kept a few chickens, you could always scare up some taters and eggs. He still likes to cook that.
At least today we have food stamps so people don't have to starve.
I was watching Colbert or Stewart last night on TV, and one of them had a guy on that wrote a book titled, Nobody, about how some companies are bringing in slaves from Thailand to work on farms here in American, and they can't get away from these farms to go for help.
It is sad that a lot of people are losing their homes now.
I used to like the stewed tomatoes, bread, and sugar, even though I have never liked stewed tomatoes. Never been much of a bean eater no matter how they are made, but I love cornbread, especially homemade pumpkin cornbread.
Hmmm. How do you make pumpkin cornbread? I might like to try that. I have been making habanero cornbread lately with all my habanero peppers I grew. It is really good and I know how to make the habaneros not so hot. I think I will make some persimmon bread this year since we have so many persimmons. It's a lot of work but it is good.
Those both sound so great. The pumpkin cornbread sounds good for Thanksgiving.
Actually, during the depression there was plenty of food, people just didn't have any money. The government destroyed crops and animals to try to raise the prices of food to help the farmers survive. Well, now we have 20/20 hindsight, but to them it made sense at the time.
I used to work in a museum and became friends with a collector. He told me one of the untold stories of the Great Depression is a lot of Indians sold priceless heirlooms of traditional beadwork, paintings, pipes, etc to make ends meet.
Collectors would go to Indians homes and buy stuff for dirt cheap. He showed me a beaded bag which an Indian had used to trade for a ride to a town which was 60 miles away. It was a small hand bag, but the intricate beadwork was beautiful.
thanks for the information on the Indians during the depression redbird. I was wondering how they faired. I think it is horrible how people take advantage of others when they are down and out.
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