The poorest American today would be a Rockefeller or Morgan back then. They have plentiful food, shelter, air conditioning & heating, wireless telephones, Internet, several cars, hundreds of television channels, MP3, video games, closets full of clothes and shoes, indoor plumbing with safe, clean drinking water, food refrigeration, interstate highways, free medical and dental care, free glasses & contacts, unemployment insurance, worker’s comp., welfare, Section 8, food stamps, WIC, Social Security, etc. etc. Pitts is out of his mind.
Pitts has always been out of his mind (besides, Lenny, the Joads were White — what about that “White privilege” ?). Problem is that “Grapes” (at least the film) is almost unwatchable today in its over-the-top big gubmint as savior propaganda.
I was born in 1954 and up until I was 8 or 9 had family that lived in the Weedpatch Camp which appears in Steinbeck’s novel. My first memory is of my aunt and uncle who lived in 2 tin cabins in the camp. They had 4 kids so one cabin was for sleeping and the other cabin was for ‘living’, cooking, etc. They had a 2 burner hotplate that they cooked on. No heating or air conditioning of any kind. It was hotter than Hades in those cabins so we spent a lot of time outside under the trees. There was a huge community bathrooms with showers that we were not allowed to go in alone. They scared the heck out of me. lol I also remember the music from the dances they had in the community hall on Saturday nights.
Eventually they moved from the tin cabins to a 2 bedroom adobe duplex in the camp and finally to a 3 bedroom townhouse in the camp. I also went to Sunset school which was the school built next door for and by the migrants.
When my grandparents first came here from Arkansas they lived in a tent city in Weedpatch which was about 1 mile from the Weedpatch Camp. Moving to Weedpatch camp was definitely ‘moving up’.
They still have Dust Bowl days in Lamont and Weedpatch but now both towns are nothing but Mexicans.