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Hard Times on the Mother Road Devised Theatre Project--October 11, 2013

Adapted from John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath

CAST OF CHARACTERS PA: also plays NARRATOR, MIGRANT

MA: also plays NARRATOR, RESIDENT, TRAVELER, WOMAN, GIRL SON: also plays NARRATOR, ATTENDANT, MIGRANT, OWNER, MAN,

TRAVELER, LOCAL, POLICE, BOY NOTES The only characters who remain the same throughout are MA, PA, and SON. These three actors play all other characters. Actors should use primarily physicality and vocal technique to distinguish between the characters. The NARRATOR character should be shared amongst the three actors and divided as is appropriate to the production. The play should remain fluid and move easily and theatrically from one scene to the next. There should be no major scene changes. SET DESCRIPTION AT RISE a Model A Ford truck is parked with the tailgate down. A man, hard on his luck sits on the tailgate with his hat shielding his eyes from the midday sun. He appears to be sleeping. It is the side of the road--the Mother Road--in a ditch. A migrant camp is seen with with a clothesline drying sheets, and various bits and pieces of the migrants’ clothes hanging to dry. There are barrels, crates, luggage and household goods. The migrants generate all the music for the production. Next to the truck, we see two old wooden chairs where the musicians and the migrants sing and share stories around a campfire. PROJECTIONS Projections of Dust Bowl photographs may be employed to help set the mood. It might be nice to project onto the hanging laundry.

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HARD TIMES ON THE MOTHER ROAD

ACT ONE: SCENE ONE

AT RISE: Lights up on the migrant who sings a song. As the song fades, the voices

of other migrants emerge.

NARRATOR/PA: Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66--the long concrete path across the

country, waving gently up and down on the map, from Mississippi to Bakersfield--over the red

lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the

bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich

California valleys.

NARRATOR/MA: 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land,

from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion,

from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the

landstead what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, from the wagon

tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

NARRATOR/SON: Clarksville and Ozark and Van Buren and Fort Smith on 64, and there’s an

end of Arkansas. And all the roads into Oklahoma City, 66 down from Tulsa, 270 up from

McAlester. 81 from Wicheta Falls south, from Enid north. Edmond, McLoud, Purcel. 66 out of

Oklahoma City; El Reno and Clinton, going west on 66. Hydro, Elk City, and Texola; and

there’s an end to Oklahoma. 66 across the Panhandle of Texas. Shamrock and McLean, Conway

and Amarillo, the yellow. Wildornado and Vega and Boise, and there’s an end of Texas.

Tucumcari and Santa Rosa and into the New Mexican mountains to Albuquerque, where the road

comes down from Santa Fe. Then down the gorged Rio Grande to Los Lunas and west again on

66 to Gallup, and there the border of New Mexico.

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NARRATOR/PA: And now Holbrook and Winslow and Flagstaff in the high mountains of

Arizona. Then the great plateau rolling like a ground swell. Ashfork and Kingman and stone

mountains again, where water must be hauled and sold. Then out of the broken sun-rotte

mountains of Arizona to the Colorado, with green reeds on its banks, and that’s the end of

Arizona. There’s California just over the river, and a pretty town to start it: Needles. But the river

is a stranger in this place. Up from Needles and over a burned range, and theres the desert. And

66 goes on over the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and the black center mountains

hang unbearably [on the horizon]. Then there’s Barstow, and more desert until at last the

mountains rise up again, and below the beautiful valley, below orchards and vineyards and little

houses, and in the distance a city. And, oh, my God, it’s over.

BEAT.

NARRATOR/PA: The people in flight streamed out on 66, sometimes a single car, sometimes a

little caravan. All day they rolled slowly along the road, and at night they stopped near water. In

the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting rods hammered and

pounded. And the men driving the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehensively.

TRAVELER/MA: How far between towns? It is a terror between towns. If something breaks--

well, if something breaks we camp right here while he walks to town and gets a part and walks

back and--how much food we got?

NARRATOR: Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your

hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift lever; listen with

your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses; for a change

of tone, a variation of rhythm may mean--a week here? That rattle--Don’t hurt a bit. But that

thudding as the car moves along--can’t hear that--

NARRATOR/SON & PA: [overlapping] … just kind of feel it.

PA: Maybe oil isn’t gettin’ someplace. Maybe a bearing’s startin’ to go. Jesus, if it’s a bearing,

what’ll we do? Money’s goin’ fast. And why’s the son-of-a-bitch heat up so hot today? This ain’t

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no climb. Le’s look. [beat] God Almighty, we gotta get a tire. ‘F we can on’y get to California

where the oranges grow before this here ol’ jug blows up. ‘F we on’y can. [beat] Jesus, they

want a lot for a ol’ tire. They look a fella over. They know he got to go on. They know he can’t

wait. And the price goes up.

ATTENDANT/SON: Take it or leave it. I ain’t in business for my health. I’m here a-sellin’

tires. I ain’t givin’ ‘em away. I can’t help what happens to you. I got to think about what happens

to me.

PA: How far’s the nex’ town?

ATTENDANT/SON: I seen forty-two cars a you fellas go by yesterday. Where you all come

from? Where all of you goin’?

PA: Well, California’s a big State.

ATTENDANT/SON: It ain’t that big. The whole United States ain’t that big. It ain’t big enough.

There ain’t room enough for you an’ me, for your kind an’ my kind, for rich and poor together

all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat. Whyn’t you go back to where

you came from?

PA: This is a free country. Fella can go where he wants.

ATTENDANT/SON: That’s what you think! Ever hear of the border patrol on the California

line? Police from Los Angeles--stopped you bastards, turned you back. Says, if you can’t buy no

real estate we don’t want you. Says, got a driver’s license? Le’s see it. Tore it up. Says you can’t

come in without no driver’s license.

PA: It’s a free country.

ATTENDANT/SON: Well, try to get some freedom to do. Fella says you’re jus’ as free as you

got the jack to pay for it.

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PA: In California they got high wages. I got a han’bill here tells about it.

ATTENDANT/SON: Baloney! I seen folks comin’ back. Somebody’s kiddin’ you. [beat] You

want that tire or don’t ya?

PA: Got to take it, but Jesus, mister, it cuts into our money! We ain’t got much left.

ATTENDANT/SON: Well, I ain’t got no charity. Take her along.

PA: Got to, I guess. Let’s look her over. Open her up, look a’ the casing--you son-of-a-bitch, you

said the casing was good. She’s broke damn near through.

ATTENDANT/SON: The hell she is. Well--by George! How come I didn’ see that?

PA: You did see it, you son-of-a-bitch. You wanta charge us four bucks for a busted casing. I’d

like to take a sock at you.

ATTENDANT/SON: Now keep your shirt on. I didn’ see it, I tell you. Here--tell ya what I’ll do.

I’ll give ya this one for three-fifty.

PA: You’ll take a flying jump at the moon! We’ll try to make the nex’ town.

MA: Think we can make it on that tire?

PA: Got to. I’ll go on the rim before I’d give that son-of-a-bitch a dime.

NARRATOR/SON: What do ya think a guy in business is? Like he says, he ain’t in it for his

health. That’s what business is. What’d you think it was? “Fella in business go to lie an’ cheat,

but he calls it somepin’ else. That’s what’s important. You go steal that tire an’ you’re a thief,

but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire.” They call that business.

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MA: Danny in the back seats wants a cup a water. Have to wait. Got no water here.

NARRATOR/SON: Listen--that rear end? Can’t tell. Sound telegraphs through the frame. There

goes a gasket.

PA: Find a nice place to camp an’ I’ll jerk the head off. But, God Almighty, the food’s gettin’

low, the money’s gettin’ low. When we can’t buy no more gas--what then?

MA: Danny in the back seat wants a cup of water. Little fella’s thirsty.

NARRATOR/SON: Listen to that gasket wheel.

PA: Chee-rist! There she went. Blowed tube an’ casing all to hell. Have to fix her.

NARRATOR/SON: Cars pulled up beside the road, engine heads off, tires mended. Cars limping

along 66 like wounded things, panting and struggling. Too hot, loose connections, loose

bearings, rattling bodies.

MA: Danny wants a cup of water.

NARRATOR/SON: People in flight along 66. And the concrete road shone like a mirror under

the sun, and in the distance the heat made it seem that there were pools of water on the road.

MA: Danny wants a cup of water.

NARRATOR/SON: He’ll have to wait, poor little fella. He’s hot. Next service station.

NARRATOR/PA: Two hundred and fifty thousand people over the road. Fifty thousand old cars-

-wounded, steaming.

NARRATOR/SON: Wrecks along the road, abandoned.

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NARRATOR/MA: Well, what happened to them? What happened to the folks in that car? Did

they walk? Where are they? Where does the courage come from?

ALL: Where does the terrible faith come from?

As the scene ends, the musicians play.

ACT ONE: SCENE TWO

AT RISE: MA reads from her prayer book. In the book she finds the poem and the

poem prompts the coming dialogue.

NARRATOR/MA: Now the wind grew strong and hard and it worked at the rain crust in the

corn fields. Little by little the sky was darkened by the mixing dust, and the wind felt over the

earth, loosened the dust, and carried it away. … The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a

red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced, the

dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen corn.

NARRATOR/MA:

[A looming black blizzard on the horizon

rolling… pulsing… driving… blasting…

over the land.

Husks of corn, sown by the wind…

floating… falling… pulsing… driving… rolling…

Livelihoods lost in the hot breath

of a waterless landscape

and in the rolling tide of progress.]

NARRATOR/PA: As the dust abated, the owners of the land came onto the land. They came in

closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with their fingers… The tenants, from their sun-beaten

dooryards, watched uneasily when the cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men

drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood

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beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark

the dust.

NARRATOR/MA: In the open doors the women stood looking out, and behind them the

children--corn-headed children, with wide eyes, one bare foot on top of the other bare foot, and

the toes working. the women and children watched their men talking to the owner men.

NARRATOR/PA: They were silent.

NARRATOR/MA: Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do.

NARRATOR/PA: [overlapping] and some of them were angry because they had to be cruel,

NARRATOR/SON: [overlapping] and some of them were cold because they had long ago found

that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.

ALL: [in unison] And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves.

TRANSITION: As tenants leave, musicians play. Perhaps “Hard Times?”

NARRATOR/PA: [When the tenants left,] the houses were left vacant on the land, and the land

was vacant because of this.

NARRATOR/SON: Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive;

and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil. The tractors had lights shining, for there is

no day and night for a tractor and the plow disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in

the daylight.

BEAT.

NARRATOR/PA: And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is a life and a

vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws

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chomp on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and

the heat and smell of life.

NARRATOR/SON: But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from.

The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors

are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not

come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy

that the wonder goes out of work ...

NARRATOR/PA: … so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and

with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation.

NARRATOR/SON: And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a

stranger who has little understanding and no relation.

NARRATOR/PA: For nitrates are not the land. And the land is so much more than its analysis.

That man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, kneeling in the earth. That man

who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.

NARRATOR/SON: But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and

love, understands only nitrates and chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself.

And his home is not the land.

BEAT.

PA: Maybe we can start again, in the new rich land--in California.

SON: … where the fruit grows!

MA: We’ll start over.

Musicians play--perhaps something like “Cherokee Shufffle”

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NARRATOR/MA: The doors of the empty houses swung open, and drifted back and forth in the

wind. Bands of little boys came out from the towns to break the windows and to pick over the

debris, looking for treasures.

SON: An’ he’s a knife wit’ half a blade gone. Tha’s a good thang. An’--smell’ like a rat died

here. An’ look what Whitey wrote on th’ wall. He wrote t‘at in the toilet in school, too, an’

teacher made ‘him wash it off.

NARRATOR/MA: When the folks first left, and the evening of the first day came, the hunting

cats slouched in from the fields and mewed on the porch. And when no one came out, the cats

crept through the open doors and walked mewing through the empty rooms. And then they went

back to the fields and were wild cats from then on, hunting field mice, and sleeping in ditches in

the daytime.

NARRATOR/SON: And the mice moved in and stored weed seeds in corners, in boxes, in the

backs of drawers in the kitchens. [BEAT] Now there came a little shower. The weeds sprang up

in the front of the doorstep, where they had not been allowed, and grass grew up through the

porch boards. The houses were vacant, and a vacant house falls quickly apart.

NARRATOR/MA: A dust settled on the floors, and only mouse and cat tracks disturbed it.

NARRATOR/PA: On a night the wind loosened a shingle and flipped it to the ground. The next

wind pried into the hole where the shingle had been, lifted off three, and the next, a dozen. The

midday sun burned through the hole and threw a glaring spot on the floor.

NARRATOR/MA: The wild cats crept in from the fields at night, but they did not mew at the

doorstep any more. They moved like shadows of a cloud across the moon, into the rooms to hunt

the mice. And on windy nights the doors banged, and the ragged curtains fluttered in the broken

windows.

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TRANSITION: Musicians play perhaps something like “Hard Luck and the

Blues.”

ACT ONE: SCENE THREE

PA: How long you folks been on the road?

TRAVELER/SON: We ain’t been lucky. We been three weeks from home.

PA: Why, God Awmighty, we aim to be in California in ten days or less. [BEAT] When we get

there. Only gettin’ there’s the trouble.

TRAVELER/SON: Oh, but she’s worth it. Why I seen the han’bills how they need folks to pick

fruit, an’ good wages. Why, jus’ think how it’s gonna be, under them shady trees a-pickin’ fruit

and takin’ a bite ever’ once in a while. Why, hell, they don’t care how much you eat ‘cause they

got so much. An’ with them good wages, maybe a family can get itself a little piece a land an’

work it for extra cash.

PA: We seen them han’bills. I got one right here. [Pulls an orange handbill from his pocket and

reads.] “Pea Pickers Wanted in California. Good Wages All Season. 800 Pickers Wanted.”

TRAVELER/SON: Why, that’s the one I seen. You s’pose--maybe they got all eight hunderd

already?

PA: This is jus’ one little part a California. S’pose they did get all them eight hunderd? They’s

plenty places else.

MA: They’s plenty places else.

PA: They’s plenty places else.

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TRANSITION: Musicians play, perhaps something like “Crossing the

Cumberlands.”

ACT ONE: SCENE FOUR

NARRATOR/MA: The western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States,

nervous as horses before a thunderstorm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing

of the nature of the change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening

government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things

are results, not causes.

NARRATOR/PA: The causes lie deep and simply--the causes are a hunger in a stomach,

multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied

a million times.

BEAT.

NARRATOR/MA: The western states nervous under the beginning change. A single family

moved from the land. Families borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the

land. The land company--that’s the bank when it has land--wants tractors, not families on the

land.

NARRATOR/SON: There was a family of twelve and they were forced off the land. They had

no car. They built a trailer out of junk and loaded it with their possessions. They pulled it to the

side of 66 and waited. And pretty soon a sedan picked them up. Five of them rode in the sedan

and seven on the trailer, and a dog on the trailer. They got to California in two jumps. The man

who pulled them fed them. And that’s true. But how can such courage be, and such faith in their

own species?

NARRATOR/MA: Very few things would teach such faith.

TRANSITION: Musicians play, maybe “California Blues.”

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ACT ONE: SCENE FIVE

SON: The nearer to California we get, the quicker we have money rollin’ in.

NARRATOR/MA: The truck rattled, spat, and died. On the road, all folks got is a family

unbroke.

PA: How bad?

SON: Bad. [BEAT] … The nearer to California we get, the quicker we have money rollin’ in.

We can’t be no worse of if we split. You stay an’ fix the truck and we take the car. We all

already be a-workin’ and stuff’ll be easy.

PA: You right. It ain’t goin’ ta do no good all of us stayin’ here. We can get fifty, a hunderd

miles before dark.

SON: You can be workin’, layin’ in a little money, if we don’ ketch up with ya. An’ s’pose we

all jus’ lay aroun’ here. There ain’ no water here an’ we can’t move this here car. But s’pose you

get out there and go to work. Why, you’d have money, an’ maybe a house to live in.

MA: I ain’t a-gonna.

PA: What you mean, you ain’t gonna? You got to look after the family.

MA: On’y way you gonna get me to is whup me. … An’ I’ll shame you, Pa. I won’t take no

whuppin’, cryin’ an’ a-beggin’. I’ll light into you. An’ you ain’t so sure you can shup me

anyways. An’ if ya do get me, I swear to God I’ll wait till you got your back turned, or you’re

settin’ down, an’ I’ll knock you belly-up with a bucket. I swear to Holy Jesus’ sake I will.

[BEAT] … The money we’d make wouldn’t do no good. All we got is the family unbroke. I ain’t

scared while we’re all here, all that’s alive, but I ain’t gonna see us bust up.

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TRANSITION: Musicians play, something like “Railroad Blues.”

NARRATOR/SON: A small wooden house dominated the campground, and on the porch of the

house a gasoline lantern hissed and threw its white glare in a great circle. Half a dozen tents were

pitched near the house, and cars stood beside the tents.

NARRATOR/MA: Cooking for the night was over, but the coals of the campfires still glowed on

the ground by camping places.

NARRATOR/PA: A group of men had gathered to the porch where the lantern burned, and their

faces were strong and muscled under the harsh white light. They sat on the steps, and some stood

on the ground, resting their elbows on the porch floor.

MIGRANT/SON: Croppin?

PA: Sure we was sharecroppin’. Use’ ta own the place.

MIGRANT/SON: Same as us.

PA: Lucky for us it ain’t gonna las’ long. We’ll get out west an’ we’ll work an’ we’ll get a piece

a land with water.

MIGRANT/SON: You folks must have a nice little pot of money.

PA: No, we ain’t got money. But they’s plenty of us to work, an’ we’re all good men. Get good

wages out there an’ we’ll put ‘em together. We’ll make out.

MIGRANT/SON: [laughs] You goin’ out there--oh, Christ! [laughs again] You goin’ out an’

get--good wages--oh, Christ! [teasing] Pickin’ oranges maybe?

PA: We gonna take what they got. They got lots a stuff to work in.

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Migrant laughs.

PA: What’s so goddamn funny about that?

MIGRANT/SON: You folks all goin’ to California, I bet.

PA: I tol’ you that. You didn’ guess nothin’.

MIGRANT/SON: [BEAT] Me--I’m comin’ back. I been there. [BEAT] I’m goin’ back to starve.

I ruther starve all at oncet.

PA: What the hell you talkin’ about? I got a han’bill says they got good wages, an’ little while

ago I seen a thing in the paper says they need folks to pick fruit.

MIGRANT/SON: You got any place to go, back home?

PA: No. We’re out. They put a tractor past the house.

MIGRANT/SON: You wouldn’t go back then?

PA: ‘Course not.

MIGRANT/SON: Then I ain’t gonna fret you.

PA: ‘Course you ain’t gonna fret me. I got a han’bill says they need men. Don’t make no sense if

they don’t need men. Costs money for them bills. They wouldn’ put ‘em out if they didn’ need

men.

MIGRANT/SON: I don’ wanna fret you.

PA: You done some jackassin’. You ain’t gonna shut up now. My han’bill says they need men.

You laugh an’ say they don’t. Now, which one’s a liar?

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MIGRANT/SON: Han’bill’s right. They need men.

PA: Then why the hell you stirrin’ us up laughin’?

MIGRANT: ‘Cause you don’t know what kind a men they need.

PA: What you talkin’ about?

MIGRANT/SON: Look. How many men they say they want on your han’bill?

PA: Eight hunderd, an’ that’s in one little place.

MIGRANT/SON: Orange color han’bill?

PA: Why? [BEAT] Yes.

MIGRANT/SON: Give the name a the fella--says so and so, labor contractor?

PA: [Pulls orange handbill from pocket and reads.] That’s right. How’d you know?

MIGRANT/SON: Look. It don’t make no sense. This fella wants eight hundred men. So he

prints up five thousand of them things an’ maybe twenty thousan’ people sees ‘em. An’ maybe

two-three thousan’ folks gets movin’ account a this here han’bill. Folks that’s crazy with worry.

PA: But that don’t make no sense!

MIGRANT/SON: Not till you see the fella that put out this here bill. You’ll see him, or

somebody that’s workin’ for him. You’ll be a-campin’ by a ditch, you an’ fifty other famblies.

An’ he’ll come in. He’ll look in your tent an’ see if you got anything lef’ to eat. And if you got

nothin’, he says,

OWNER/MA: Want a job?

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MIGRANT/SON: And you’ll say, “I sure do mister. I’ll sure thank you for a chance to do some

work. An’ he’ll say,

OWNER/MA: I can use you.

MIGRANT/SON: And you’ll say, “When do you start? An’ he’ll tell you where to go, an’ what

time, an’ then he’ll go on. Maybe he needs two hunderd men, so he talks to five hunderd, an’

they tell other folks, an’ when you get to the place, they’s a thousan’ men. This here fella says,

OWNER/MA: I’m payin’ twenty cents an hour.

MIGRANT/SON: And maybe half the men walk off. But they’s still five hunderd that’s so

goddamn hungry they’ll work for nothin’ but biscuits. Well, this here fella’s got a contract to

pick them peaches or -- chop that cotton. You see now? The more fellas he can get, an’ the

hungrier, the less he’s gonna pay. An’ he’ll get a fella with kids if he can, ‘cause -- hell, I says I

wasn’t gonna fret ya. [BEAT] I says I wasn’t gonna fret ya, an’ here I am a-doin’ it. [BEAT] It

took me a year to find out. Took two kids dead, took my wife dead to show me. But I can’t tell

ya. I should of knew that. Nobody couldn’t tell me neither. I can’t tell ya about them little fellas

layin’ in the tent with their bellies puffed out an’ jus’ skin on their bones, an’ shiverin’ an’

whinin’ like pups, an’ me runnin’ aroun’ tryin’ to get work -- Not for money! Not for wages!

“Jesus Christ, jus’ for a cup a flour an’ a spoon a lard.” [BEAT] An’ then the coroner come.

NARRATOR/MA: Them children died a heart failure.

MIGRANT/SON: Put it on the paper. Shiverin’, they was, an’ their bellies stuck out like a pig

bladder.

NARRATOR/MA: And the people fly from the terror behind--[escaping in droves to the

mythical land of gold and honey.]

ACT END: Musicians play.

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INTERMISSION

ACT TWO: SCENE ONE

AT RISE: We see Ma doing household chores and our migrant singers gather

around the fire. Ma brings coffee. She sits, pulling up a barrel, they sing.

NARRATOR/MA: In the daylight the migrant people scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as

the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water. And because they

were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and

defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; they

talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in the new

country. When the sun went down, perhaps twenty families and twenty cars were there. [BEAT]

In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children

were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was

one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a

hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck through the

night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning. A family, which the night

before had been lost and fearful, might search its goods to find a present for a newborn baby. In

the evening, sitting about the fires, the twenty were one. They grew to be units of the camps,

units of the evenings and the nights.

NARRATOR/PA: A guitar unwrapped from a blanket and tuned -- and the songs, which were all

of the people, were sung in the nights. Men sang the words,

NARRATOR/MA & PA: … and women hummed the tunes.

NARRATOR/PA: Every night a world created, complete with furniture -- friends made and

enemies established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with

humble men, with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world, established; and

every morning the world torn down like a circus.

19

NARRATOR/SON: At first the families were timid in the building and tumbling worlds, but

gradually the technique of building worlds became their technique. The worlds were built in the

evening. The people, morphing in from the highways, made them with the their tents and their

hearts and their brains.

NARRATOR/MA: In the morning the tents came down, the canvas was folded, the tent poles

tied along the running board, the beds put in place on the cars, the pots in their places.

NARRATOR/PA: And as the cars moved westward, each member of the family grew into his

proper place, grew into his duties; so that each member, old and young, had his place in the car;

so that in the weary, hot evenings, when the cars pulled into the camping places, each member

had his duty and went to it without instruction: children to gather wood, to carry water; men to

pitch the tents and bring down the beds.

NARRATOR/MA: … women to cook supper and to watch while the family fed.

NARRATOR/SON: And this was done without command. The families, which had been units in

which the boundaries were a house at night and a farm by day, changed their boundaries. In the

long hot light, they were silent in the cars moving slowly westward; but at night they integrated

with any group they found.

NARRATOR/PA: Thus they changed their social life -- the kind of change that only men can

make happen. They were not farm men any more, but migrant men. And the thought,

NARRATOR/MA: the planning,

NARRATOR/PA: the long staring silence that had gone out to the fields, went now to the roads,

NARRATOR/SON: to the distance,

ALL: [in unison] -- to the West.

20

TRANSITION: Musicians play something like “Oklahoma Hills.”

ACT TWO: SCENE TWO

AT RISE: Ma remains with migrant singers.

NARRATOR/SON: Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde

of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the

land and broke it up and growled and quarreled over it, those frantic hungry men; and they

guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned the earth

and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was ownership.

NARRATOR/PA: The Mexicans were weak and fed. They could not resist, because they wanted

nothing in the world as ferociously as the Americans wanted land.

NARRATOR/MA: Then, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but owners; and their

children grew up and had children on the land. And the hunger was gone from them, the feral

hunger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for land, for the green thrusting grass, for the swelling roots.

They had no more stomach-tearing lust for a rich acre.

NARRATOR/SON: These things were lost, and crops were reckoned in dollars, and land was

valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted.

NARRATOR/PA: Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to good

shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with the earth and growing

things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper. And as time went on, the

business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger.

NARRATOR/SON: Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although

they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves:

21

NARRATOR/MA: Chinese,

NARRATOR/PA: Japanese,

NARRATOR/SON: Mexicans,

NARRATOR/MA: Filipinos.

OWNER/PA: They live on rice and beans.

OWNER/MA: They don’t need much.

OWNER/SON: They wouldn’t know what to do with good wages.

BEAT

NARRATOR/PA: And all the time the farms grew larger but there were pitifully few farmers on

the land. And the imported serfs were beaten and frightened and starved until some went home

and some grew fierce. And the farms grew larger and the owners fewer.

NARRATOR/MA: And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed

on paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they owned

it.

NARRATOR/SON: And some of the farms grew so large that one man could not even conceive

of them, so large it took batteries of bookkeepers to track interest and gain and loss; chemists to

test the soil, to replenish; straw bosses to see that the working men were moving along the rows

as swiftly as their bodies could stand.

NARRATOR/MA: Then the farmer really became a storekeeper. He paid the men, sold them

food, and took the money back. And after a while he did not pay the men at all.

22

NARRATOR/PA: These farms gave food on credit. A man might work to feed himself; and

when the work was done, he might find that he owed money to the company. And the owners not

only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned.

NARRATOR/MA: And then the dispossessed were drawn west--

NARRATOR/PA: dusted out,

NARRATOR/SON: tractored out.

NARRATOR/PA: Carloads,

NARRATOR/MA: caravans -- homeless and hungry;

NARRATOR/PA: twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred

thousand.

NARRATOR/SON: They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless--

NARRATOR/PA: restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do

NARRATOR/MA: to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut -- Anything. Any burden to bear.

ALL: [in unison] For food.

BEAT.

NARRATOR/MA: And the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California.

NARRATOR/PA: Hardened,

NARRATOR/MA: intent,

23

OWNER/SON: and dangerous.

BEAT.

NARRATOR/SON: And while the Californians wanted many things, the new barbarians wanted

only two things --

NARRATOR/MA: Land and food,

NARRATOR/PA: to them the two were one.

TRANSITION: Musicians lead song: “Halilullah I’m a Bum.”

ACT TWO: SCENE THREE

NARRATOR/MA: A hungry, homeless man, driving the roads with his wife beside him and his

children in the back seat, could look at a California field, fallow and [see hope]. A fallow field is

a sin and the unused land a crime against thin children.

NARRATOR/PA: He scoured the farms for work. He drove his old car into a town. “Where can

we sleep the night?”

LOCAL/SON: Well, there’s Hooverville on the edge of the river. There’s a whole raft of Oakies

there.

NARRATOR/MA: So he drove his old car to Hooverville. He never asked again, for there was a

Hooverville on the edge of every town.

PA: Can we jus’ pull up anywheres an’ camp?

MAN/SON: Set down anywheres, here in this place?”

24

PA: Sure. Anybody own this place, that we got to see ‘for we can camp?

MAN/SON: You wanna camp here?

PA: What you think I’m a-sayin’?

MAN/SON: [snaps at him] Well, if you wanta camp here, why don’t ya? I ain’s a-stoppin’ you.

WOMAN enters.

WOMAN/MA: I see you just met the Mayor.

PA: What the hell’s the matter with him? I just asked if we could camp here!

WOMAN/MA: You folks jus’ come acrost?

PA: Jus’ got in this mornin’.

WOMAN/MA: Never been in Hooverville before?

PA: Where’s Hooverville?

WOMAN/MA: This here’s her.

NARRATOR/SON: [And in California,] always they were called Hooverville.

BEAT.

NARRATOR/MA: In Hooverville, families pitched their tents as near to water as they could get;

or if they had no tent, they went to the city dump and brought back cartons and built a house of

corrugated paper. And when the rains came the house melted and washed away.

25

NARRATOR/SON: They settled in Hooverville and scoured the countryside for work, and the

little money they had went for gasoline.

PA: There’s thirty thousan’ acres, out west of here. Layin’ there. Jesus, what I could do with that,

with five acres of that! Why, hell, I’d have ever’thing to eat!

NARRATOR/MA: At the camps the word would come whispering, There’s work. And the cars

would be loaded in the night, the highways crowded --

ALL: “a gold rush for work.”

NARRATOR/SON: The people would pile up, five times too many to do the work.

ALL: “A gold rush for work.”

NARRATOR/SON: They stole away in the night, frantic for work. And along the roads lay the

temptations --

NARRATOR/PA: … the fields that could bear food. And a man might fight for land he’s taken

food from.

NARRATOR/SON: Then the raids -- the swoop of armed deputies hit the Hoovervilles.

POLICE/PA: Get out. Department of Health orders. This camp is a menace to public health.

RESIDENT/MA: Where we gonna go?

POLICE/PA: That’s none of our business. We got orders to get you out of here. In half an hour

we set fire to the camp.

RESIDENT/MA: They’s typoid down the line. You want ta spread it all over?

26

POLICE/PA: We got orders to get you out of here. Now get! In half an hour we burn the camp.

NARRATOR/SON: In half an hour the smoke of paper houses, of weed-thatched huts, rising to

the sky, and the people in their cars rolling over the highways, looking for another Hooverville.

TRANSITION: Musicians play something like, “Busted.”

ACT TWO: SCENE FOUR

NARRATOR/MA: The moving, questing people were migrants now. And they streamed in on

the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. They had no

argument, no system, nothing but their numbers for their needs. When there was work for one

man, ten men fought for it -- fought with a low wage.

MIGRANT/PA: If that fella’ll work for thirty cents, I’ll work for twenty-five.

MIGRANT/SON: If he’ll take twenty-five, I’ll do it for twenty!

MIGRANT/PA: No, me, I’m hungry. I’ll work for fifteen!

MIGRANT/SON: I’ll work for food!

MA: The kids, you ought to see them. Little boils, comin’ out, an’ they can’t run aroun’. Give

‘em some windfall fruit, an’ they bloated up.

MIGRANT/PA: Me. I’ll work for a little piece of meat.

NARRATOR/MA: And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great

owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went

down and prices stayed up.

27

OWNER/SON: And pretty soon now we’ll have serfs again.

NARRATOR/MA: Cotton Pickers Wanted!

NARRATOR/SON: placards on the road, handbills out, orange-colored handbills:

NARRATOR/MA: Cotton Pickers Wanted!

MIGRANT/PA: I’m a good picker!

MIGRANT/SON: Here’s the man, right here!

MIGRANT/PA: I aim to pick some cotton.

NARRATOR/MA: Cotton Pickers Wanted!

BEAT.

OWNER/SON: Got a bag?

MIGRANT/PA: Well, no, I ain’t.

OWNER/SON: Cost ya a dollar, the bag. Take it out o’ your first hunderd and fifty. Eighty cents

a hunderd the first time over the field. Ninety cents second time over. ‘F you ain’t got the buck,

we’ll take it out of your first hunderd and fifty. That’s fair and you know it.

MIGRANT/PA: Sure it’s fair. Good cotton bag, last all season. [sighing] If they was on’y fifty

of us, we could stay awhile, but they’s five hunderd. Field won’t last hardly at all. I knowed a

fella never did get his cotton bag paid out. Ever’ job he got a new bag, an’ ever’ fiel’ was done

‘for he got a hunderd and fifty.

28

NARRATOR/MA: They say a thousand men are on their way to this field. Cotton Pickers

Wanted! More men picking, the quicker the cotton reaches the gin.

TRANSITION: Musicians play something like “Green Pastures of Plenty.”

ACT TWO: SCENE FIVE

NARRATOR/MA: The spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are

fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes, swelling

from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and

soft as breasts. [BEAT] All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the

limbs bend gradually under the fruit. Grape blossoms shed their tiny petals and the hard little

beads become green buttons, and the buttons grow heavy.

NARRATOR/PA: The owners of the orchards watch and calculate.

OWNER/SON: We can’t pay wages, no matter what wages.

NARRATOR/MA: And so first the grape skins wrinkle a little and swarms of flies come to feast,

and the valley is filled with the odor of sweet decay. The meat turns dark and the crop shrivels on

the ground.

OWNER/SON: We can’t make good wine. People can’t buy good wine. Rip the grapes from the

vines. Good grapes, rotten grapes, wasp-stung grapes. Press stems, dirt, and rot.

NARRATOR/PA: The smell from the ferment is not the rich odor of wine, but the smell of decay

and chemicals.

OWNER/SON: Oh well, it has alcohol in it anyway. They can still get drunk.

29

NARRATOR/PA: And the decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on

the land. The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price,

and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all.

NARRATOR/MA: Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground and people came for miles to take

the fruit. But this could not be.

OWNER/SON: How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and

pick them up?

NARRATOR/PA: And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry with

the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing

the fruit -- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

NARRATOR/MA: And coroners must fill in the certificates -- died of malnutrition -- because

the food must rot,

NARRATOR/PA: must be forced to rot. And the smell of hunger and rot fills the country.

NARRATOR/MA: They come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges,

NARRATOR/PA: but the kerosene is sprayed. In stillness they watch the mountain of oranges

slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes

of the hungry there is a growing wrath;

NARRATOR/MA: In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy.

TRANSITION: Musicians play something like “Wayfaring Stranger.”

ACT TWO: SCENE SIX

30

NARRATOR/PA: Over the high coast mountains and over the valleys the gray clouds marched

in from the ocean. The wind blew fiercely and silently, high in the air, and it swished in the

brush, and it roared in the forests. The clouds came in brokenly, in puffs, in folds, in gray crags;

and they piled in together and settled low over the west. And then the wind stopped and left the

clouds deep and solid.

NARRATOR/SON: The rain began with gusty showers, pauses and downpours; and then

gradually it settled to a single tempo, small drops and a steady beat, rain that was gray to see

through, rain that cut midday light to evening. And at first the dry earth sucked the moisture

down and blackened.

NARRATOR/MA: For two days the earth drank the rain, until the earth was full.

NARRATOR/PA: Then puddles formed, and in the low places little lakes formed.

NARRATOR/SON: The muddy lakes rose higher, and the steady rain whipped the shining

water.

NARRATOR/MA: At last the mountains were full, and the hillsides spilled into the streams. And

the streams and the little rivers edged up to the bank sides and worked at willows and tree roots.

NARRATOR/PA: The muddy water whirled along the river banks and crept up and up until at

last it spilled over into the fields,

NARRATOR/MA: into the orchards,

NARRATOR/PA: into the cotton patches where the black stems stood.

NARRATOR/MA: Level fields became lakes, broad and gray, and the rain whipped up the

surfaces.

31

NARRATOR/SON: Then the water poured over the highways, and cars moved slowly, cutting

the water ahead, and leaving a boiling, muddy wake behind.

NARRATOR/MA: The earth whimpered under the beat of the rain.

[BEAT]

NARRATOR/PA: And the migrant people huddled in their tents:

MA: It’ll soon be over.

SON: How likely is it to go on?

NARRATOR/PA: And the men built little dikes around the tents.

NARRATOR/SON: And the beating rain worked at the canvas until it penetrated and sent

streams down.

NARRATOR/PA: And the little dikes washed out and the water came inside,

NARRATOR/MA: And the streams wet the beds and the blankets.

NARRATOR/PA: The people sat in wet clothes.

NARRATOR/SON: They set up boxes and put planks on the boxes. Then, day and night, they

sat on the planks. The little gray tents stood in lakes.

NARRATOR/MA: And at last the people had to move.

NARRATOR/PA: Then the cars wouldn’t start because the wires were shorted; and if the

engines would run, deep mud engulfed the wheels.

32

NARRATOR/MA: And the people waded away, carrying wet blankets in their arms. They

splashed along, carrying children and the very old, in their arms.

NARRATOR/PA: And if a barn stood on high ground, it was filled with people, shivering and

hopeless.

MA enters the barn.

BOY/SON: You own this here?

MA: No, Jus’ come in outa the wet. You got a dry blanket we could use?

BOY hands MA a blanket.

MA: Thank ya. What’s the matter’th that fella?

BOY/SON: Fust he was sick -- but now he’s starvin’. Got sick in the cotton. He ain’t et for six

days.

MA: Your Pa?

BOY/SON: Yeah! Says he wasn’ hungry, or he jus’ et. Give me the food. Now he’s too weak. I

didn’ know. He said he et, or he wasn’ hungry. Las’ night I went an’ bust a winda an’ stoled

some bread. Made ‘im chew ‘er down. But he puked it all up. Got to have milk. You folks got

money to git milk?

MA: Hush. Don’t worry. We’ll figger somepin out.

BOY/SON: [Crying] He’s dyin’, I tell you! He’s starvin’ to death, I tell you.

MA: Hush.

33

NARRATOR/PA: Ma’s eyes passed to the young woman traveling with her. The two women

looked deep into each other. The girl’s breath came short and gasping as she breathed,

GIRL/MA: Yes.

NARRATOR/PA: For a minute the girl sat still in the whispering barn. Then she hoisted her

tired body up and drew the comfort about her. She moved to the corner and stood looking down

at the wasted face, into the wide, frightened eyes [of the boy’s father]. Then she lay down beside

him. He shook his head slowly from side to side as the girl loosened one side of the blanket and

bared her breast.

MUSIC RISES: [Insert title of SONG #15].

NARRATOR/PA: Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently

in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled

mysteriously.

MUSIC SWELLS.

END OF PLAY