Out of the Dust ..Moving West

I have a photo of my Mother on the wall in our den. She looks young ..probably in her twenties . Dark curly hair , eyes looking ahead , not at the camerman , but distant , but with purpose. Her mouth is slightly open as if she is saying " ok whats next ? " .

Life came at her hard .her own mother died early , Mom was the oldest girl , and by all acounts she took over the mother duties when her mother passed. Her father remarried , but what might have been a happy ending , turned tragic , when her stepmother gave birth to a severely handicapped child. The step mother abandoned all pretext of carring for her four step children , to the point of being abusive. The Step Children were parceled out to different relatives , all living marginally in poverty ridden Indian territory.


The Depression , racial prejudice , climate , all contributed to the living conditions . 1930 in the plains were dark days . Thousands of people had left Oklahoma , driven out by the economy and the frequest dust storms that lterally blotted out the sky. Dust so thick that newspapers frequently told of mass deaths of birds and rabbits who were unable to find shelter from the storm. The dust was a silent killer adding to respiratory deaths and tuburculous. No crops meant no food ...no food meant no hope.

It is no mystery why so many left the state looking for better pastures. Initially States like Oregon and California welcomed the refugees , but as the Westward Migration became a flood the doors were shut . State police in California waited on the Border , turning away any one who had no money.

What is a mystry is why so many stayed behind . Only a very small portion of my Mothers family Left Oklahoma , somehow against this dreary landscape they managed to survive , forming close bonds of family and holding onto the promise of better days ahead through a harden faith in God , forged in small town churches ..with tattered pictures of Jesus on the wall , and hymns ground out on dusty pianos for the affluent churchs and barely strung guitars for the poorer ones .

I do not know very much at all about this time in my mothers life ... I do know that in the 1940's she went west on a Greyhound bus ..a Journey that must have taken courage and resolve , ad difficult s times were as hard as her life was it was the life she knew and it would be replaced by a new state , and new vocation and ultimatly a new relationship.