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.