Children of the Dust: An Okie Family Story

by Henshaw, Betty Grant

• ISBN13: 9780896725850
• ISBN10: 0896725855
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-01
• Publisher: Texas Tech Univ Pr

Summary

"Betty Grant Henshaw was born into a large family of tenant farmers in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl era. For years her father, Bill, worked himself to exhaustion, trying to earn enough to provide for his wife and nine children and to buy his own small farm, but he was never able to get ahead. Other family members had joined the great migration of Okies to California. Finally yielding to pressure from others, with some reluctance Bill piled his family in the Ford pickup and set off along Route 66 for the Golden State." "There the family found abundant opportunities to work, but work often meant backbreaking labor for dirt-cheap wages in hundred-degree heat. Bill did his best to shield his family from the brutality of the fields. His abiding respect for work, which he cultivated in his children, led his family through difficult times. In the end, although he missed Oklahoma, Bill was proud to find that the Grants could thrive in any soil."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Sandra Scofield
Introduction	xiii
Victoria Smith
Grant Family Tree	xxv
Oklahoma to California Map	xxvi
Oklahoma
Oklahoma	3	(2)
The Log Cabin	5	(5)
The Dust Bowl	10	(2)
Pleasant Hill 1937	12	(5)
Muskogee 1938	17	(6)
Tahlequah 1940	23	(10)
Wagoner	33	(13)
Sequoyah	46	(22)
South Limestone	68	(9)
Return to Sequoyah	77	(11)
Tiawah	88	(18)
Holy Water	106	(5)
Sale Day	111	(7)
Route 66	118	(19)
California
Corcoran	137	(8)
Enrolled	145	(4)
Uncle Leonard	149	(3)
Dairy Avenue	152	(5)
Christmas	157	(4)
Faith	161	(6)
Memorial Day	167	(7)
Weeding Fields	174	(4)
Touched by Love	178	(3)
Friends	181	(7)
A Burglary	188	(4)
His Name Was David	192	(4)
Commencement	196	(6)
Armageddon	202	(5)
A Record	207	(2)
Ignited Fumes	209	(3)
``Seems Like We're Home''	212	(2)
Another Long Journey	214	(3)
An Afterwards	217	(4)
Acknowledgments	221	(4)
Index	225