At Home On the Range

Commerce, TX Cotton Belt Depot: From the Cotton Belt Railroad Symposium, paying homage to the St. Louis Southwestern Railway.

I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath for the second time in the early afternoon at the Starbucks across from NYU next to the Astor Place subway stop. It was loud, and the Beatles’ “Let It Be” was blasting over the dull roar of the caffeinated crowd. I felt tired by the Joad’s struggles, worn out by their hardship and aching for the tough times to come. I could almost feel the wetness of the endless rain, smell the damp hay in the old barn, hear the urging cries of Ma Joad pushing the family through the storm…

But I was in the Starbucks on Astor Place.

I finished reading The Grapes of Wrath for the first time several years ago in the late summer evening, on a couch in Commerce, Texas, an hour and a half away from anything that could be deemed a “major city.” It was quiet, and my mom was playing Carlos Santana in our kitchen and grilling peppers. The experiences, needless to say, were quite different. But no matter where I am when I finish The Grapes of Wrath, it always gives me the shivers—that tingle of solidarity and a deep realization of the history of Southern culture. Because the Joads unfailingly remind me, no matter where I am when I read about them, of the families I grew up with. The story takes place mostly in California, but the attitude of resilience and revolt, the cult of hospitality, and the instant camaraderie with fellow farmers invokes a strong Southern tradition.

In the middle of downtown New York City, it’s hard to imagine the silence and emptiness of where I grew up, but this will give you a pretty good picture (feel free to skip around, it gets boring). This isn’t a town where we live and die by the land—it’s more livestock country than farming country—but we are home to an agricultural college, and we share the connection to our dirt articulated in the Joad’s migration. Commerce can trace its roots back to a general store opened in 1864 by a man named Si Jackson. We built ourselves up thanks to the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, our cows and our cotton (thirty minutes outside of town lies the Audie Murphy American Cotton Museum). The town was originally known as Cow Hill due to—you guessed it—all the cattle ranches surrounding the area. Just outside town, a ranch called “Almost Heaven” epitomizes the love locals have for their land. We are the proud home of the oldest Bois d’Arc tree in the state, and hold an annual festival in September which boasts funnel cake, beauty pageants and crocheted pillows sold to commemorate this sacred gift. Indie rock artist Ben Kweller once wrote a song about us (it’s not that complimentary).

 I think there are many reasons why Southerners understand each other and bond together in the way the migrant workers in the Hoovervilles and government camps of The Grapes of Wrath did. The Joads can take the hardships because every year, without fail, the weather climbs to 100 by June and stays there for a month while the skies remain empty and bright. There’s absolutely nothing to do, so people become involved in things like hog-showing. Besides having dialects that are almost impossible to understand at times, local vernaculars often boast colorful phrases related to hunting, fishing, or farming. For example, “That dog will hunt,” means “yes” in Texan.

“Think it’ll rain by October?”

“That dog’ll hunt.”

And then, of course, there’s the hospitality, and the food. It’s just the law—even if you think so-and-so’s family is a bunch of snot-nosed brats, you still have to talk to them and give them a glass of sweet tea and some brisket if you’ve got it. Why? I’m not sure—I guess because there just aren’t that many families to grow up with. Tom Joad knew everyone he came across when he got back to Oklahoma because there’s no way to not know everyone in town when the town’s population hasn’t broken a thousand yet. But thanks to the counteracting cult of Southern bluntness—a characteristic Ma Joad’s hard, feisty exterior displays well throughout the novel—you can always tell so-and-so’s family that they are, in fact, snot-nosed brats, while you’re handing them the brisket.

Underneath all the bigger issues of socialism and government and economy and morality that saturate The Grapes of Wrath lies a small, subtle sub-theme: the beauty of Southern families. In many ways, the Joads fulfill all the terrible stereotypes of the South—the pregnant teenage girl, the uneducated farmer, the accent-ridden country rubes, the impoverished family—but in many ways they encompass all that is good in the South. They make it through with resilience, family values and a deep sense of their homeland’s culture. By the end of the book, the reader is impressed with their scrappy ability to survive, and convinced that any big-city folk would not fare nearly as well.