Volume 13 , Issue 26

Dust Bowl & Okie Lore

Lois Guffy sent us the following information and links concerning the "Dust Bowl Lore" and the "Okies" term that was coined by Ben Reddick. Reddick, a newsman, coined the "Okies" term and was credited with first using the term Okie in the mid-1930's, to identify migrant farm workers. He noticed the "OK" abbreviation (for Oklahoma) on many of the migrant's license plates and referred to them in his article as "OKies."

Californians began calling all migrants "Okies," regardless of whether or not they were actually from Oklahoma. The term was made famous nationwide by John Steinbeck's novel, Grapes of Wrath. Read the following LA Times article. Ben Reddick was a free-lance journalist and later publisher of the Paso Robles Daily Press.

Lois says, "Linda, I read a lady's comment who took offense to being called Okies. I am great friends with Richard Reddick whose father coined the Okie title. Richard told me one of his dad's jobs as a newsman was to log all of the migrant workers by cars. He shortened the name Oklahoma to Okies as well as other states, so not to have to write the full long name on his chart. No offense was made by him, but others used it for all migrant workers as derogatory later."

Dust Bowl Lore
According to the Oklahoma Historical Society website on the Dust Bowl Lore, Oklahoma had less acreage in the area designated by the Soil Conservation Service as the dust Bowl than did the states around Oklahoma. Such as Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.

It was a clear day, Sunday, 14 April 1935and the temperature was in the upper eighties. The citizens of Guymon, Oklahoma were in their 4th year of drought, and were packing the Methodist church for a "rain service." They were doing whatever they could do to seeking some sort of intervention for some much needed moisture. It was late afternoon that the skies were darkened, but not by rain much needed rain clouds. It was worst! The "Black Blizzards" hit Guymon, OKlahoma on the late afternoon of 14 April 1935.

The temperatures in the southern High Plains fell more than 50 degrees in a few hours as the 70 miles an hour wind blew black soil from Canada and northern plains states. The darkness lasted for 40 minutes and was followed by 3 hours of partial darkness. The relative humidity decreased to less than 10 percent.

An Associated Press staff writer, Robert Geiger, was writing a series of articles for the Washington, DC, Evening Star. geiger used the term "dust bowl" for the first time in print during that period of time. Geiger referred to the "western third of Kansas, southeastern Colorado, Oklahoma Panhandle, northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle and northeastern New Mexico. That area is the Dust Bowl boundary designated in 1939 by the Soil Conservation Service as the geographical extent of the severe wind damage by 1939.

Though the word "Oklahoma" quickly became synonymous with the term "DUst Bowl," the truth is that Texas and Cimarron counties suffered the worst damage, severe storms and most dramatic sand drifts. Journalists reporting the dust bowl and the "Black Easter" storm in April 1935 planted firmly the the "Oklahoma Dust Bowl" in the public's mind. Did you know that during the dust storms, singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, lived in Pampa, Texas? Guthrie was an Okemah, Oklahoma native and occurred far from his Oklahoma home town. Guthrie's 1940 recordings released under the title of Dust Bowl Ballads made him known as "Oklahoma's Dust Bowl Balladeer." BUT . . . those songs actually drew upon his experiences in the Texas Panhandle in the early 1930's.

Woody's Guthrie's migrant heroes were the sharecroppers and tenant farmers forced off the land by improved mechanized farm equipment, extreme low prices for cotton and the Great Depression. The New Deal's crop reduction program paid the farms' owners to plow under their land. The sharecroppers and tenants who had actually worked the land were made homeless and became migrants.

Some of the critical statements and stories that came from Guthrie's songs and The Grapes of Wrath were, "Oklahoma has four seasons, often within the same week." Other stories circulated that even with all the doors and windows closed the dust was so thick . . . that a strong light bulb looked like a cigarette burring and you couldn't see your hand before your face.

One story claimed that a man's car was stalled by the sand. When he opened the door, he shot ground squirrels overhead tunneling for air. The wind velocity was so wicked that you could fasten a logchain to a fence post or tree, and if it isn't blowing straight out, it is a calm day.

Farmers were advised not to rotate their crops, because the wind would do it for them. Others referred to dust storms as "Oklahoma rain." You could hold your pans up to a keyhole and let the wind and sand clean them. Some characterized it as so dry for so long that frogs could not learn to swim and would drown when put in water. The wind blew the farm away. The wind blew away so much soil that postholes were left standing above the ground.

Have you ever heard the saying, "Dust sometimes gets so thick you can run your tractor and plows upside down. So dark you can't see a dime in your pocket, a shirt on your back, a meal on your table, or a dadgum thing. Only thing that is higher than that dust is your debts. Dust settles, but debts don't."   |  View or Add Comments (1 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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