Day Fourteen of the Move

Wow! I can’t believe we finally made it to Tulsa. It’s a lot different from what I expected. All my friends told me that there wouldn’t be anything here when I arrived, even Grapes of Wrath made it out to be just a whole lot of dust and farm land. I’m surprised to find green trees in the suburbs and impressive, modern buildings in the city. It really blew my mind that things were so different after I just finished an almost 500 page book where everything about the area was different. I found this really cool Lit Trip while I was trying to find more information on the book, and I really think that other people might like it as well. If anyone is interested I’m going to post the link here because it really helped me to understand all of the different themes of the book, as well as the culture of the West South Central region during the Great Depression.

http://docs.google.com/a/techvalleyhigh.org/leaf?id=0B5Ei4_tPPs_LMmUwMjU5ZWYtMTdjZi00MTIwLWIxNGEtM2Y4ODM3Zjk4YjU3&hl=en&authkey=CPbfrZgG

As I stepped out of the car, the sun beat down on my head and I stretched. It felt good to be out of the car for good now and I was looking forward to taking a hot shower after the lukewarm ones on the trip. The last leg of the trip I spent looking up facts about Oklahoma in my book. I didn’t feel as dumb reading about Oklahoma as I did about other states because my parents had already told me some things about the state. For example; I already knew that Oklahoma had a large oil industry because my dad worked in the oil industry and that’s the whole reason we had to move. I also knew that Oklahoma contained the World’s Largest Praying Hands because my mom’s mom (the grandma who didn’t pass away) is very religious and told me that I had better visit those hands. I’ll make sure to tell her that we stopped by, even though we really only drove by. On the final leg of our journey we also stopped to look at the Ozark Mountains. The Ozark Mountains are the most extensive mountainous region between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. I thought it was really cool that while they are often referred to as mountains, they are actually a high plateau. Another interesting thing is that a lot of books take place in these mountains, like Where the Red Fern Grows and Shepherd of the Hill. The first people to settle in the Ozark Mountains were of German, English, Scots-Irish, and some Native American descent. I would have liked to take some time to hike through them, but my parents told me that there would be plenty of time to return and visit them another day.

The new neighbors were very friendly and brought us chocolate chip cookies. I had a flashback to the beginning of the Grapes of Wrath where Muley Graves shared what little food he had with Tom Joad and Jim Casy. For once I thought about how some things, like good Southern hospitality, never change. Others, like what happens when a loved one dies, have changed for the better, and some have changed for the worse. Overall, the South West Central region has changed drastically in the years since the Great Depression, and I’ll be the first to admit that The Grapes of Wrath was a pretty good book. I enjoyed reading about a different time period than my own and I really think that I might enjoy living here after all.

Day Thirteen of the Move

Now that the trip is almost over I’m kind of sad. Even though I don’t want to move to Oklahoma, I had fun spending time with my parents and visiting all of the different sites in each state. Today we are making
the last stops of our trip in Texas at NASA and the Alamo. I found this old Scottish merchant called the ELISSA in my book that I wanted to go and visit, but it was too far out of our path, go figure, with the path we took from California to Oklahoma it’s funny that now my parents would decide to stay on course. This might have something to do with the GPS my dad finally plugged in. Both of my parents seem fascinated by it and I’ve already been yelled at four times in the past hour and a half for trying to suggest a shorter route than the one the GPS gives. I settle back in my seat and drift off to sleep, dreaming of what it would have been like to be Tom Joad during the Great Depression. No GPS to keep them on course, no IPod to shut out the outside world, no cell phone to text friends back home, it must have been a nightmare for the poor guy. When we stopped for lunch and I got out of the car, I realized that it didn’t really matter that Tom Joad didn’t have any of the technologies that I relied on. Looking around me, there were some really beautiful landscapes and it was fun to catch up with my parents and learn what was going on in their lives. I decided to see more what it would be like without technology in the car, but that only lasted about an hour because my mom kept talking about her old knitting circle and all of the different colored yarn that she had used in the past. As much as I wanted to experience what life was like without technology and to bond with my parents more, I draw the line at over an hour’s discussion on yarn.

Day Eleven of the Move

I just traveled from Mississippi into Louisiana this afternoon. I traveled to some cool historic landmarks and found some cool facts. Such as that the DELTA QUEEN, the cool sternwheel steam boat that was used for cruising the major rivers like the Mississippi river. It now is docked in Tennessee as a hotel. Another cool national landmark is Jackson square which is historic park in the French quarter of New Orleans. The book I got from the gas station has a lot of cool facts about Louisiana, like Louisiana was purchased for about $15 million and the Louisiana treaty was ratified on October 20, 1803. So in my reference book the Grapes of Wrath I can connect it to the people that were affected by the two hurricanes in Louisiana and the people in the Grapes of Wrath. Both the people were devastated that they had to leave there homes behind and move away. The only difference is that in the Grapes of Wrath is that the government took their land and the people in Louisiana had their land destroyed by both the hurricane Katrina and Rita.

Day Nine of the Move

First thing this morning we entered Arkansas. We were running low on fuel so we had to stop at a gas station to re-fuel. My parents were standing in line to pay and I was looking around and noticed a book on the region south west central. I picked it up and decided to buy it so I went back out to the car and started to dive into my new book. Once I started reading my book I found out some quite interesting things about this region. It was kind of shocking when I found out that the Mississippi river also passes through Arkansas. I thought it was only in Mississippi. Also, Arkansas’s natural resources are water, timber, and diamonds.

So it turns out that my parents had a surprise visit planned to my grandmother’s house in Arkansas. To our surprise when we showed up it turns out that she had an accident and had passed away. I find this ironic because previously when I was reading the novel, Grapes of Wrath on their trip the grandmother died. Its surprising how things have changed. During the Great Depression if a family member passed away while they were on the journey they often had to be left behind. I think that this is a very sad thing and I'm glad that this isn't still done today.

Day Seven of the Move

Despite my promise to not be so ungrateful and to enjoy myself more, I think my parents sensed that I wasn't really that into the whole side trip thing. They stopped taking so many side trips everyday and stuck to the main road. Part of me felt bad, but the other part of me was too wrapped up in the Grapes of Wrath to really notice what was going on. That's right, it's the end of the world and pigs can fly because I am loving the book. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that life was so much harder back then, when I have it so easy now. During the trip the Joad family lost multiple family members and it makes me realize how lucky I am to have both of my parents alive and healthy. Reading this book has helped me to put things in perspective and I'm not taking things like an air conditioned car, for granted anymore.

On another note we've driven through the majestic Rockies and through the flat, rolling land of Colorado. We've reached Topeka, Kansas and it's really more of the same thing appearance wise. lots of green outside the city, lots of buildings inside it. I have to be honest though, I wasn't paying all too much attention because I had gotten pretty sucked in by my book. Really I never saw it coming either because I've never been one to enjoy reading until now.

Day Five of the Move

We've managed to finally reach the state of Utah after a torturous journey from Nevada. Just before we reached the state line, my parents sprung it upon me that we were going make a side trip to the Lagoon Amusement Park because they thought that it would be something that I would enjoy. Now I will be the first to admit, that so far this trip has had a complete lack in excitement and that an amusement park would be the perfect fix. That is, if I wasn't going with my parents who think that the merry-go-round is too intense.

When we stopped for another one of mom's pee breaks in a small town, I made a quick trip to the local bookstore and bought a copy of the Grapes of Wrath. Before I'm judged though, I would just like to say that desperate times call for desperate measures. There was no way that I could go to that amusement park with my parents, and I thought that maybe if I read mom's favorite book that she would be so thrilled that she would completely forget about the park. One hour later when we reach the amusement park, I'm only three pages into the book, and Mom isn't buying my excuse about not being able to put it down. I understand where she's coming from when I spent the majority of the hour using it as a pillow and even drooled on it a bit.

The amusement park is in a great location, with lots of bright green trees and dusty mountains, just like in Nevada. I have a feeling that this region of the country is a generally dusty place and I find that I don't mind it all too much. I try to picture Tom Joad and his family as my mom described them, picking up everything they owned and leaving at a moment's notice, as we were, and traveling a great distance to start over. As I gazed around me at my surroundings, I pondered why they would ever want to leave a place like this, not realizing that I was starting to warm to the idea of living somewhere other than California. I recalled that the Joad family was from an entirely different time and that things weren't the same as they used to be. Sure the economy was taking a hit, but we hadn't reached the extremes that the Joad family must have experienced during the Great Depression. We weren't moving to find jobs, we were moving because my dad had been promoted to the head of his company's division in Tulsa. I felt a twinge of guilt for making such a big deal over the move, when I clearly had it a lot better than most people who lived during the Great Depression. I promised myself that I would continue reading the Grapes of Wrath so that I could find out what life was like during the Depression. I also promised that I would try to stop complaining so much about the move and the places we were stopping at, while my parents were a bit odd, they were only trying to make this move easier on me.

Day Three of the Move

It's been two days since we left the state of California behind us. I already miss the balmy summer air and the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay that I used to walk to on Saturdays to think about things. It's day three and we've only made it as far as the sad excuse for a city, that is otherwise known as Winnemucca, Nevada. We picked up a hitchhiker back in Reno and my parents spent the entire time that it took us to get to Winnemucca, talking the poor guy's ear off. When the guy stuck his thumb out he had no idea what he was in for. People usually tell you to watch out for who you pick up, but I bet that guy will be more careful when it comes to hitching rides in the future. My mom had gotten hooked on the whole Grapes of Wrath comparison and decided that the rest of us were just as interested in how the road trip taken in the book compared to the one we are on now.

In the beginning of the book Tom Joad hitches a ride with a trucker, in his efforts to return to his family's farm. Now that we had a hitchhiker of our own, my mom was practically bouncing in her seat with excitement. I listened for a solid half an hour about how today no one stops for hitchhikers, and that it's a lost art. I kid you not, she really did say lost art. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes at her and I think that the hitchhiker felt the same way because he was out of the car in no time once we reached Winnemucca and I distinctly remembered him saying that he wanted to go as far as Elko. Not that I really blame him, if I could have left without my absence being noticed, I would have.

Don't get me wrong though, Winnemucca was nice in a different sort of way. There was a lot more open space than I was used to seeing and all of the shrubs in the endless fields just outside the city, prepared me for what I expected to see in Oklahoma. At night, seeing the city lit up against the backdrop of mountains was breathtaking, but it wasn't like I was going to tell my parents this. After all, I had a point to stick by, two points really. The first being that we never should have left California to begin with and the second being that we shouldn't take the scenic route because there was nothing worth seeing anyway. It wouldn't look good for me to start changing my opinion on the move now, I had to stand firm in what I believed in. I also have to find some way to get my mom to stop talking about that dumb book. She doesn't seem to understand that I didn't read it for a reason.