SATURDAY
On Saturday, I visited the 2011 Dust Bowl Festival at Sunset
School, which sits beside the Arvin Migrant Center, along with Paula & Mark V. It was
a large festival with a cafeteria filled with exhibits of photographs and
articles; food booths; exhibits of cotton and potato sacks; an old car dressed
as if in the Dust Bowl; live music; and a play at the end of the day. Highlights included:
·
A conversation with Bob England, born in 1944 to
an Oki family and a self-described ‘tramp of Arvin’ as his father was an
alcoholic and in jail and in road houses, and his mother left them when he was
around 10. He later joined the military,
and then worked in envirohazard monitoring and now splits his time between
Bakersfield, Lake Isabella, and Mexico.
He is uniquely able to describe different words: of poor kids and
wealthy, and of Mexico and the U.S. (he described being in Mexico and meeting a
man named Juan Mejia who, in his childhood, had worked in the potato shed while
he worked in the fields. He also
described that his mother would park their car on the dirt beside the fields
and draw a circle around the car with a stick, and that he and his younger
sisters had to stay in the car or inside the circle until age 7, when they ‘got
to pick’; he was so excited to get out of the car, partly because he had to
change diapers and feed them). His words
are incredibly honest and detailed, and filled with humor, pain, sadness,
strength, and provocation but all in a single tone, as Paula noted. All in all, there is a generosity about him
that is very moving. I visited him on
Sunday at his home (see below)
·
Conversations with Larry B. and Shirley J.
Underwood, a very lively couple who talked about briefly working in the
fields. Mark V. talked to them in more
detail, but they were very excited and open and seem like potential actors for
the play.
·
A brief conversation with Nelda Oldham, 84 years
old, who was living at the migrant camps when John Steinbeck came to do
research for Grapes of Wrath. She
doesn’t remember meeting him, but said she’d be open to talking further. Her son writes for Variety (I believe) in LA.
·
A conversation with WC Stampes, who went to the
school at the camps when they had an airplane in the back that was used as a
classroom. He showed me a camp manager’s
report, which included reports on employment, illness, demographic information
about residents, and other details of life in the camp, which I will try to copy
before I leave
·
A visit to the old community room at the camp. It is
filled with old objects and the spirit surrounding them. I suggested that it might be a great place
to do a ‘teaser’ for the show for the residents, as a way to encourage folks to
come down to Arvin to see it.
·
A conversation with Earl Shelton, who came West
with his family and got stuck in Arizona because three of their tires were
‘down to the rim.’ He said that they
drove two days and nights and I imagined the physical strength and necessity
motivating the driver, and what it must have felt like for a little boy to wake
up in the middle of the night and look out at the stars.
·
A production of ‘Children of the Dustbowl’ a
lovely readers theater production based on a book of the same name, and which
featured very good music: guitar,
accordion, and banjo. The group is
largely made up of one family (Dyanne Durr directed it and two of the three
musicians were her children). Dyanne
also has done a musical adaptation of Woodie Guthrie, is a descendant of a Dust
Bowl migrants, and teaches at local colleges.
She was very excited to learn about the possibility of a Cornerstone
play coming to the area.
SUNDAY
I began Sunday by visiting a Spanish-speaking church on the
North side of Arvin (Primera Iglesia Bautista), which is generally the poorer
side of town, as noted in Ashley’s report.
It was a large room that seats about 200, spare and with beautiful
simple multi-colored glass windows.
There were about 15 congregants, mostly bi-lingual, although the Bible
Study was all in Spanish (my Spanish is good enough for simple conversations,
and to tell folks about Cornerstone and what the goals are for the project, as
well as my own background; a lot of the service I didn’t follow). Afterward, I spoke to the Pastor who told me
he lives in Bakersfield but his church sent him down here to increase the size
of the congregation.
It was a sleepy Sunday, with the streets mostly empty and
many of the stores closed. I visited a
party supply store and spoke to the owner about the community. He didn’t speak English, but we talked for a
while about his history in the area. He
said that it is very hard to find jobs here, unless you work in the fields, and
so many young people leave the area. He told me that there had been an accident
at a nearby plant, and that two area young people had been killed. Paula and Mark said that that they had seen a
protest about the same thing the day before.
Later, I bought a newspaper and found more details: On
October 12, Armando Ramirez (from Arvin), a worker at the Community Recycling
and Resource Co. (near Lamont) entered into a cement drainage tunnel and died
from exposure to toxic fumes. Armando was 16 and was working under papers that
said he was 30. His brother, Eladio, who
was twenty-two, went in to rescue him and passed out. He was taken into the hospital and died on
Saturday. According to one report I
read ‘the two brothers had recently complained to family members about strong
odors at the facility and they had been given only painters’ masks to protect
them from the fumes’. (
www.wasterecyclingnews.com 10/14).
Cal-OSHA and the US Department of Labor are investigating. The plant composts organic waste from items
such as produce from grocery stores and tree trimmings.
My instinct about how to respond to such an enormous tragedy
in the heart of the community we’re thinking about working in is to wait. I cannot fathom the sense of loss and
outrage, and I don’t know what kind of investigation is happening. At the same time, it’s impossible not to be
shaken by it, and also not to see it in the context of the stories of Dust Bowl
workers I had just heard the day before.
Later in the day, on the advice of the owner of the Party
Supply store, I visited the Becerra Family Store. His store cashes checks, and also sells
cowboy hats and shoes. Pablo (he didn’t
give his last name, but I believe it is Becerra) is in his eighties and has
lived in Arvin most of his life (he moved from Mexico when he was young). He told me about working for Digiorgio Farms
(which employed thousands of people in the 30s and 40s- Bob England and his
family also worked there). He’s a warm,
generous man and I think will be a wonderful resource. By the gestures and smiles of the people who
walked by as we were talking, he seems like a pillar in the community. He couldn’t talk much, but he invited me to
come back later this week to talk more about the history of Arvin.
I ended the day by visiting the home of Bob England, in
Bakersfield. As I got there, he
literally had an engine for a Model A Ford on a harness that he was installing
(photo above – the Model A was the preferred car for Okis moving west). His lot is an array of woodpiles, car parts,
and cars. He says he owns (I believe) 45
cars. NOTE: When I asked him if we
could use one of his cars for the play, he said yes. He also said that if we break down the set
and have extra lumber he would take it off our hands.
Our conversation was long and detailed. I recorded about an hour of particularly
strong stories. He said that if we do a
play without talking about movie theaters in Arvin, we’d be missing the story
(The Rancho was for white audiences, there was another movie theater for
Mexican audiences – Bob lived in a largely Mexican neighborhood, and would
tramp out front of the white theater and get free admission). He also told the story of living with his
grandmother in a two room shack with his siblings after his father was in jail
and his mother had left them. He described
a Christmas tree in their home, which their grandmother brought them one year:
tumbleweed decorated with Christmas icicles.
NEXT STEPS
Contact the folks at the Arvin Migrant Center to see about
meeting with residents
Calling ‘Building Healthy Communities’ (Funded by the
California Endowment) about attending a meeting at the Sunset School on
Thursday night (see attached)
Follow up with contacts of Bob England, especially Charlotte
Davis, who runs the Savings and Thrift in Arvin
Calling Nelda Oldham, WC Stampes, and Nazar Kooner
Bringing Cornerstone flyers to folks in the downtown Arvin
business community
