JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Today from Radio Diaries, the story of a woman who was part of one of the largest migrations in U.S. history. Millions of desperate Americans abandoned their homes, farms and businesses during the dust bowl of the 1930s. The last drought ended by 1940. Pat Rush's family were farm laborers exhausted by trying to make ends meet. So they left Arkansas and followed the hundreds of thousands who had traveled Route 66 to the San Joaquin Valley in California. There, the federal government had built resettlement camps to help deal with the influx. Migrant stories have two parts - the leaving of an old life and the building of a new one.
PAT RUSH: OK, well, my name is Pat Rush, and I grew up in Arkansas. We lived way out in the country. And my whole family were cotton pickers. We didn't own the fields. You would get paid by the pound.
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RUSH: (Singing) I've done everything I could...
As far back as I can remember, I loved to sing. So I'd kind of pretend the cotton fields were a big audience, and I would sing.
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RUSH: (Singing) I can leave now knowing I have done my part.
That's me singing right there.
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RUSH: (Singing) I'm going to be...
(Singing) Fancy free. No one to tie my feet to the ground.
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RUSH: (Singing) No love for me tomorrow.
I remember my sister, Fran and Bonnie and I - we were picking cotton with Mama. And out of the clear blue, she just stood up, and I can remember pretty much the words she said. She said, pick up your sacks, kids. We're going to California. And I thought, that sounds good to me. In my mind, I knew there was better stuff out there 'cause I thought, there's more to life than being this poor.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: A hundred thousand families on wheels, seeking three square meals a day. These people take pilgrimage to the promised land of plenty, the lush valleys of California.
RUSH: When we first got to California on Route 66, and when we got to the top of the mountain, I remember we stopped there on the road, got out of the car and looked down in the San Joaquin Valley. And it was lush green everywhere, as far as your eyes would see, oranges and probably grapes and all kind of crops. And it - I think we were in awe of it. I'd never seen anything that beautiful before.
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UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) And I ain't going to be trading this away (ph).
RUSH: I know Mama thought, when we got to California, her and her kids would be fine - plenty of work for everybody, places to live - but that wasn't true. It was a sad situation, you know? But the big crisis would be trying to find a place to live. And that's when we moved into a camp that - it was a government camp.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: So government camps, for a nominal rent, payable in money or in work hours, provide sanitary shelter sites for these virtual refugees.
RUSH: When we first pulled into the camp, I remember and - people sitting outside kind of staring - you know what I'm saying? - looking like, more new people coming in or whatever. There was tents. There was cabins. There was this row of cabins here, a row here. It looked huge to me. But I was excited to have arrived to live in a place where there was kids so close, that you lived real close to all your neighbors, like, right here. And there were showers and toilets, and that's the very first time I'd ever seen a indoor toilet. So I thought we had moved to the big time.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Here, the migrant and his family, fortunate enough to find shelter on U.S. property, can maintain their self-respect while seeking market for their labor.
RUSH: Everybody was working in the fields. My mama, my sisters, and my brother - everybody's picking up potatoes, cotton or grapes. But my job was to stay home and take care of my baby sister and do kind of what little women do, I guess. Clean the cabins - I kept them really clean, and then I learned to make cornbread, and I was so proud of myself. It was kind of like playing house.
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UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Singing) Over here in the government camp, that's where we get our government stamps, over in that little raghouse home.
RUSH: Everybody in the government camp, all your neighbors, was as poor as we were. I knew I lived in as nice a house as anybody else there. It might - one might be more dirty or cleaner than the other one, but you still lived in a government camp. And I liked that feeling, of feeling equal. But then as you get out in public, everybody's not from the camp.
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RUSH: On weekends, we could walk from the camp to Lamont, a little town, and we probably stood out like a sore thumb. The business owners were California people, and I didn't feel like they wanted us here. And I would - could see them, you know, like, kind of snickering at you or something 'cause you talked different and dressed maybe a little different. I think they thought we were a little bit lower-class people, almost, like, dirty or ignorant.
That was a hard time in my life because I was so shy. I never felt good enough, especially in high school. When I started high school, I was still this little intimidated girl 'cause here's these little girls in matching cashmere socks and sweaters, and I thought, that's what I want to be. But one day, I was in the ninth grade, and I thought, to hell with this. I think I was angry. I thought, you're as good as anyone. You're as pretty as any of these other girls, and you're smart as they are. So you hold your head up and walk down the hall and be yourself. And that's when I first got some guts about me.
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RUSH: (Singing) Well, I saved up all my money. I'm going to leave this town. I'm not going to live here no more. I've been dreaming...
Well, you know, to end this conversation, life's like a book, and I'm on the last chapter of my life, and I like it. I can see. I can walk. I can hear. I can go to church, or I can have a beer. And I think about way, way back in my life when I was a little girl in Arkansas. I would never have dreamed that I have a nice house like I do. I don't have a fancy house, but I have a nice house, a house on a street with indoor plumbing. And so home is a - that is a big, big word.
And, like, there's a lot of Mexican people here that do field work, just like we did. Some of them still live down in the camp area where we used to live. I think about them out in the fields working and living in the camp, and I feel for them 'cause I know how that feels.
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RUSH: (Singing) So don't look for me tomorrow 'cause I'll be gone. I already paid my dues of settling down.
SUMMERS: Pat Rush in Bakersfield, California. The government camps around Bakersfield were immortalized in John Steinbeck's "Grapes Of Wrath." Today, some of them still house migrant farmworkers from Mexico. Our story was produced by Joe Richman of Radio Diaries and edited by Ben Shapiro with music from Pat Rush herself. You can find the full version of this story on the Radio Diaries podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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