We Call 'em Okies

I’d never have written this piece except for a lady who wrote a news article printed in the Bakersfield Californian. She decided to tell the reading public that the book, The Grapes of Wrath, was completely exaggerated. Her main objection was that it was being used as required reading in high school classes and was inaccurately portraying a period in American history. I don’t know if it was an exaggeration; I never read the book, written in 1939. I know it was fiction with a historical base. She spoke of the Dust Bowl beginning in the mid-1930s and stated that people moving west were not comprised of crop workers entirely but many came and found other jobs as white collar workers or industrial jobs. She said a good number of those coming to the west never worked in the fields and were not without funds and were not homeless. Okay, there’s room for that in history. By 1939, the migration west had already been going on for several years, and we saw caravans of cars on Highway 466 coming through our town, heading for the great San Joaquin Valley to find work, I would say, in harvesting the crops. An occasional sign on the car said, “California or bust!” Many of the cars had mattresses on top. How else could one carry a mattress in a car? You will recall that the Great Depression entered into the scene during that time, and work was scarce. Times were hard, even for California’s residents.

There were Okies and Arkies plus Texans, Kansasians and even Coloradan’s making the trek west. However Oklahoma seemed to be the hardest hit in the Dust Bowl era, and it was their name that described the move west. I was only eleven years old when that fateful book was written, but I was “here” and met those people, went to school with their children and wondered why so many were stopping in our town of Tehachapi. Some children came to school with no socks on, and the boys often had holes in the knees of their levis. Not nearly as bad as the “pre-worn” jeans purchased in the stores today. We called them “Okies.” At school they were new kids, so we made sure they knew we were here first; but they soon worked into the crowd.

When driving into my father’s gas station there would often be cord showing through on their tires and sometimes no spare. In those days people carried tire patching kits where they could put on their own patches and keep going. They also carried a pump to air the tire after patching. Tires had tubes within them, then. No tubeless tires.

Sometimes they traded articles for gas, which they pronounced “gayse.” Their way of pronouncing words was different from ours. They said, “cain’t” instead of can’t and “tar” instead of tire and would say “come own” instead of come on. All one big country but different dialects.

Friday and Saturday movies at the BeeKay featured cowboy movies; and, of course, a favorite was Oklahoma-born Roy Rogers – a singing cowboy at that. When it came to the big chase with Roy in pursuit of the bad guys, the little Okie boys would call out, “‘Come own’, Roy!”

Those who got work here in our mountains worked mostly in the potato crops which, at that time, encompassed thousands of acres in the Tehachapi, Brites and Cummings valleys. Farming had taken on a dramatic change in the Tehachapi area whereby many vintage orchards had been pulled up to make room for “King Potato.” The sheds along Tehachapi Boulevard, now known as apple sheds, were first called potato sheds – for obvious reasons. According to long time grower – the late J.C. Jacobsen, the harvesting of the crops required loading one hundred railroad cars per day for a fifty day period before the harvest could be complete.

Housing was a critical need and Tehachapi provided tents for new residents. Mill Street and H Street were lined with hundreds of tents which became tent cities. I don’t know what kind of sanitary facilities were available but I do know that our fickle mountain weather could make a tent a cold place at night, even during harvest time. .

Referring back to the article in the Californian, the writer mentioned that they really did not use colloquial phrases as the Steinbeck book indicated such as the mother saying, “I’ll slap ya’ with a stick of stove wood!”

Gee, what loving mother wouldn’t resort to that remark at times?

It didn’t mean she would actually do it. I found those little sayings rather entertaining and colorful. How about, “She’s hasn’t got sense enough to come in out of the rain!” Or, maybe, “She’s so fancy! Why she thinks butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.” Here’s one: “Jobs are as scarce as hen’s teeth...” or “He looks like he was ‘drug’ through a knothole.” Another is, “Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.”

One of my favorites is, “Cute as a speckled pup in a little red wagon.”

Now that’s pretty cute, and I heard those and many others here in Tehachapi. Kind of dresses things up and keeps the conversation from dragging.

My old boss, Ada Lee McLaughlin, the Chief Operator at the telephone office had a little phrase she used when describing someone who had a reputation for “living it up a bit”. She’d say, “He’s a ring tailed tooter!” She’s the only person I ever heard say that, but it certainly is a catchy phrase. She was from Oklahoma and was one of those white collar workers.

At any rate, some of the Okies moved on and some stayed here and became good citizens and often respected business people. We met them, went to school with them and grew up with them.