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One Central Valley man is ready for a road trip retracing his parents' migration to California 75 years later. Don Erwin is the son of two Dust Bowl migrants who made the long haul to California.
Californians turned "Okie" into an insult. My family had similar insults thrown at them — “Mexican” and “paisa."
Print Growing up in the 1950s, author Gerald Haslam developed what he called a perverse pride in a taunt hurled at the people of his hardscrabble Central Valley town: Oildale Okies. The Kern County community was known for its Dust Bowl migrants, people looked down upon by other Californians who labeled them — and their neighbors — dirty and poor. The air smelled of crude oil. The heat seared. The dust devils danced in the ever-present wind. By Haslam’s account, Oildale was characterized by “a combination of conviviality and bigotry.” But for the most part, people looked out fo\r ea...
How the United States Chose to Become a Country of Homelessness Advocates have been sounding the alarms for months—issuing reports, penning press releases, warning politicians as an increasing number of Americans made jobless by the pandemic have fallen behind on their rent. Now, the warnings unheeded, the United States is facing an unprecedented homelessness crisis, one that is as predictable as it was avoidable. I first saw signs of this coming catastrophe on May 26, as the markets in New York City roared—the Dow was up 530 points, and the S&P hit an 11-week high. But in...