Okies Leave California

Rancho Salusa Segundo, CA

In the wake of raging wildfires in Southern California that have left close to half a million people evacuated from their homes, thousands of descendants of the Dust Bowl Exodus were seen loading up their flivvers today and heading back to the Great Plains. As native Californians weep in disbelief while their precious homes are burnt to a crisp, large numbers of Okies are making their way out of the state along the historic Route 66 heading back to ancestral lands in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and the Texas Panhandle.

"I hear tell there ain't no fires back in the old country," said one toothless Okie named Hank. "And no earthquakes or mudslides neither," chimed in another, more toothsome fellow named Red.
"We're gonna live off the fat of the land!" exclaimed one unshod youngster in overalls. "I hear they got acres of wheat and miles of corn, and subdivisions without gates, and they ain't got no such thing as a Homeowner's Association to tell you what you can and can't do."

While some have decried these Okies as fairweather migrants and others have taken to tossing charred bricks at their overloaded Chevys and calling them "hoboes" "vagabonds" and "no account drifters" there is no denying that these grandchildren of the Dustbowl, soon to be children of the Ashbowl represent the kind of stoic resilience of pioneers from days gone by. These people are America, and America is on the move once again.

"We're the people that live," declared one grim faced matriarch riding shotgun in an old Ford F-150. "We're the people that go on. And besides, I hear they finally got that soil erosion problem under control."