Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Exploration 7

Traveling familes would put up tent for the night

In the book The Grapes of Wrath a interesting thing brought up is the camps. People traveling would stay and put up camp with other travelers. During the early years of the Great Depression large numbers of homeless families congregated in squatters' camps. In Oklahoma City these "transient camps". According to a 1934 study, about half of the camp residents were former tenant farmers or sharecroppers who came from Oklahoma's rural areas. In this time period and cultural it was normal for numbers of families to camp together for a good nights rest away from traveling and their cars. Families in this time period were all have money troubles and couldn't make means were they were. So most picked up and left for California. They would put all the belongings they could carry and stuffed them and themselves in a car and travel for miles. Every now and then they would need a actually good night of sleep. Where they could all stretch out, some fire grilled food and talk with other travelers. In today's society we have similar things. Of course, there is good old camping. But with that people stay to themselves and there are a few upgrades with the sleeping space. For example, there are now RVs and tents with multiple rooms. These are things people during the depression would of killed for.



4 comments:

  1. Indeed Lauren. Of course our folks today have the advantage of technology at their disposal. My post was on the camps as well; I thought it was very unfortunate that California was not more compassionate towards these folks... After all, they have had it hard enough at that time. Nice work, and good use of the pictures as well

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very interesting, I had never really heard about these camps and whatnot before now. And yeah those pictures really portray the situation quite well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very good exploration.. it was very well worded and great photos..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good point about today's RVs. It would have been a lot easier to travel if they had something with multiple rooms instead of just a jalopy. Nice job on this exploration.

    ReplyDelete