When you hear someone say, it’s never been this bad before, it’s a safe bet they didn’t live in Boise City, Oklahoma on April 14th 1935. On that day, the sky turned black — winds kicking up a wall of choking dust after years of drought and poor farming practices, and just blew the soil away. Across the plains, the winds created the Dust Bowl just as the country was dealing with the Great Depression. Before long the poor farmers up and left. Like Americans had done for a century when things got bad —  they headed west. By the thousands, in broken down trucks and cars, they raced toward California along Route 66 — America’s Dust Bowl Highway.

One of the children of the Dust Bowl we met, Clinton Kennedy, grew up in Arkansas, and now lives in Bakersfield. But remembers the day his father said it was time to hit the road, that he was just one more mouth to feed. So Clinton made a snap decision that changed his life.

 

“My cousin got out of the Navy and he bought a big old Pontiac, a red one, and he stopped there where we were staying at, and said I’m going to California, anybody want to go with me? And eleven of us got into that car and went with him to California.” 

Clinton Kennedy

 

The migrants, sometimes called “Okies” arrived flat broke. Their plight was captured in John Steinbeck’s masterpiece “The Grapes of Wrath.” And a piece of the Dust Bowl has been preserved and is remembered once a year in Bakersfield, California at The Dust Bowl Festival. At the Weedpatch farm labor camp, just outside Bakersfield, you can still see the small cabins the migrants lived in. The Sunset Labor Camp is still a working site near the historic buildings. It was in this very camp Steinbeck did much of his research. And the community wants future generations to understand and remember this piece of American History. It’s not about celebrating the tragedy of the dust bowl — it’s about surviving it. But sadly, the 30th and last Dust Bowl Festival was held in 2019. It would appear many of the Children of the Dust Bowl have passed on or are just unable to attend, and many young people are not interested. But the old camp remains, and the music and the memories will be with us forever.