Quote:
Originally Posted by Albany NY
Michael, thank you SO much for posting this. It is my absolute favorite on NLA. The pics of downtown LA show what man has done, but this pic shows man at his most raw. No glitz, no glamour, no misplaced pride. Just survival. There is so much to see here.
1) Where are these people going? What is around the corner that we can't see?
2) Is this the social center of Tentville? Is the man in the car possibly looking for workers?
3) A communal dining area. Does this mean the "plantation" provided food?
4) Even when the "dustbowlers" lost everything, they still managed to save a treasured piece of furniture. An old rocking chair.
5) A stovepipe poked through every flammable tent. Nothing to worry about. I'm sure it is perfectly safe.
6) Take a close look, friends. WTF is this? A ghost dog?
7) The poor wagon owner can't even afford to replace a tire. How long did he run the wagon, hoping desperately that the unprotected wheel wouldn't break?
8) Is that a little girl in the tent? Did she have anyone to play with? Or was she put to work in the fields?
9) And who was the man who could afford a haircut? Did he, and the well-dressed boy, belong to the fashionable car to the right?
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Well, obviously I agree. It is a very evocative image. It's hard to look at
these Depression-era, large format pictures and not fall into some
wool-gathering of our own. Most of us heard the stories from our parents
and aunts and uncles. In this case, I think a couple of things are going
on. First, to my eye, the camp appears to be emptying out. It
being November, harvesting has largely ended with the almond crop
(still small in 1936) either in or mostly so, the peach, plum and nectarines
are all boxed and gone, cotton will be done unless late this year and
table grape production for Kern County is still very modest but, in any
event, would be over by November. These fields we can see are pretty
barren, it doesn't look to me as though they've been in production this
year. Maybe, but I don't think so. Some pruning and brush clearance would
be going on but the labor-intensive part of the year is over and the bulk of
the migrant work force will have moved on to Imperial Valley. (1) This
looks like some people just out for a walk, maybe with a couple of
kids. Impossible to know what awaits around that curve, likely more
hard times. (2) Could be a field boss driving out on the week-end to tell
these guys where to show up Monday morning, maybe they are going
to prune some fruit trees, maybe one of them is a good mechanic and
he's going to help put equipment in order and winter storage (very
mild winters here in Kern County). (3) No, I don't think any of the
government camps distributed much food, maybe none. But providing
this kind of area helped with general cleanliness, keeping at least some of
the food and trash out of the tents. (4) Yep. (5) Check. (6) No idea.
Probably a trick of the light. (7) This looks like farm equipment to me. So
this would belong to the local farm owner. Maybe the guy in the car (no. 2)
is hiring one of these guys to wrestle a new (or used) tire onto that rim
for fifty cents. (8) Mostly children worked, if they were able. This is
another reason I think this may be a week-end shot. (9) This could be
the camp manager giving a quick trim to a guy who's got a shot at a
more permanent job or the local farm owner didn't want to drive all the
way into town and stopped by for the haircut. The little boy in the white
shirt and tie(!) is a mystery isn't he. Maybe his dad is the barber and
they drive out on the week-ends to give away haircuts. Such things
happened. I hope he paid attention, the lessons which surrounded him on
this day were priceless.
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