"Have you ever seen 'The Grapes of Wrath?' That was us."

when books are time machines...

I hadn’t seen the movie or read the Grapes of Wrath, but the tone Grandpa used when he spoke of it gave me the impression that his childhood was tough. They were poor, had survived The Depression. I knew that much. His mother sewed the children clothes out of potato sacks.

Childhood though…had Grandpa ever been a child? He seemed to tower above us. Even if someone was a few inches taller, Grandpa seemed to tower above them too.

He’d always call the younger grandchildren over to “Come sit in Grandpa’s lap!” We’d take our special seat in Grandpa’s recliner, take in the faint smell of cigarette smoke. Other grandchildren might be running around outside, playing board games in the basement, or watching golf in the living room with the adults. The kids far outnumbered the adults at family gatherings.

I don’t remember him sharing much about his upbringing, or much about his past at all. I think he mostly wanted to hear from us, his grandkids.

But what we all remember is him saying, “Son, have you ever seen the Grapes of Wrath?” He would pause. “That was us.”

“Son” wasn’t just directed toward my dad. Any of the little boys running around could be called “Son.” If you were one of the many little girls, you might be called, “Sweetie” or “Hun.”

Too absorbed in my own small trials of growing up and teenage angst, I never gave much thought to any of my grandparents’ stories. That is, until Grandpa Hood passed away a few years ago.

That’s when I dug out my parent’s family tree book¹, and poured over interviews and pictures of my grandparents and ancestors. Dates, names, stories. Still, there was some mystery surrounding my grandpa’s upbringing. I promised myself that that year I would read The Grapes of Wrath. There are many classics I’m sad to say I haven’t read yet. This one quickly got bumped up the list.

The book seemed large, daunting, old. I put it off. I didn’t get to it that year, or the year after that.

Finally, a few weeks ago I pulled it off the shelf. Had anyone warned me what a compelling read it was, I wouldn’t have picked it up that day. I had still hours of homeschool planning to get through before the start of our school year. But I was hooked after page one.

Pieces of stories I’d remembered and interviews my parents had recorded, started to come to life. It was more than a fictional story about Tom Joad and his family. I was reading part of my family’s story.

Arthur Rothstein, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Steinbeck writes in such a way that you can feel the layers of dust. You can feel the family’s anticipation of picking oranges and grapes in lush Californian fields. And then the setbacks, one heavy blow after another. You can see the eyes of the hungry children of migrant workers. Was my grandpa one of those children?

My grandpa said this in an interview with my dad:

“Several years after I was born, dad got into the potato business… we stayed in cabins, shacks, whatever. We met ‘interesting’ people along the way.  

I started to learn to sew sacks at 9-10 years old. I couldn’t lift them yet; they were 100 lb. sacks. I got paid piece work: 52 cents per 100 sacks. You had to be fast.”

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu on Unsplash

If I’ve been quiet on this Substack lately, if you’ve been to my house and seen the growing laundry piles, it’s because an old classic took me on a road trip back in time. I’ve been to Oklahoma, California, and everywhere in-between.

I’ve had my nose in a book, one that connected me to a gray-haired man smelling faintly of cigarettes, his gruff voice saying, “That was us.”

Catherine Pfenning

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

When has a book brought you back in time? What are some stories you remember from your grandparents? Have they been written down anywhere?

1. Five or six years ago my parents compiled years of family history, pictures, and recorded interviews, and put it all together in a hard-covered book. I made sure to buy a copy.