There was one part of The Grapes of Wrath story that moved me to tears when I first read Steinbeck's novel in high school; so much so, I recalled it clearly when I re-read it only a few months ago.
The sections of the novel particularly moving to me were those that portrayed the death of the Joad grandfather as the family left Oklahoma, and later on, the death of the grandmother as they entered California. Both died while the family was on the road; the grandfather was literally buried by the side of the road. Those passages reminded me of what my mother told me about my grandfather who passed away before I was born; they also brought up for me memories of my grandmother who passed away when I was ten. (I grew up with my maternal grandmother living with my family.)
In Grapes, we're prepared for the grandfather passing by other characters' expressing concern about the health of another character, Rose of Sharon, a young woman who is expecting to give birth momentarily. Then we witness a dog being run over by a truck. (Yes, another small animal dies.) Then the grandfather is asked if he feels ill.
"You Goddamn right," said Grampa weakly. "Sicker'n Hell." He's dead of a stroke a few sentences later.
One of the characters expresses the thought the Grandpa started dying as soon as they left the farm. He couldn't stand to leave it. And that was what broke him.
Grapes of Wrath not only helps us understand the extent of economic agony suffered by so many Americans during The Great Depression of the 1930's; it helps me understand what my own family went through during that time. The novel dramatizes the swift and sudden reduction in the standard of living the Depression brought on for so many Americans;and how decisive it was in breaking people's spirits, health, and, ultimately, bringing on their untimely death.
In the last few months I had the good fortune of watching Ken Burns' six-part documentary series, Portrait of the Roosevelts, so, not surprisingly, thoughts about The Great Depression have been with me as we have all witnessed our country and the entire world rocked by the ravages of the Covid Pandemic. Aside from the horrible death toll, the pandemic has spread enough economic misery around the world to remind everyone (who wishes to be reminded) of The Great Depression.
I remember growing up and being told that during most of 1930s, my maternal grandfather, Sol Lieberman, owned and operated a menswear custom tailoring shop in East New York, Brooklyn, New York. He and his wife, Celia, lived in an apartment above the store. My mother, Edna and her two sisters, Pearl (older) and Doris (younger), grew up in that apartment above the store. As The Depression, which began with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, worsened through the1930s, Sol's once prosperous custom-tailoring business began to falter, not only because times were tough, but because ready-made suits, already sold in stores, began to be carried in catalogues which became increasingly popular nationwide throughout the 1930s.
Just as agricultural commodity prices collapsed (affecting the fortunes of the real-life Oklahoma farmers the Joad family is modeled after), deflation in the 1930s nibbled away at prices and profit margins for everything, including custom-made men's suits. During the first and second presidential terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt the American people were suffering through the modern-day Fed Bank's worst nightmare, deflation, wherein the less businesses charge for goods and services, the less money everyone has to purchase them.
By the end of the 1930s, Sol Lieberman's business was winding down. My father, Phil Lustig married Sol and Celia's daughter, Edna, and opened retail ladies' garment stores in New Jersey, first in New Brunswick, and then in Plainfield, a town to the north, in the center of the state. Phil was able to purchase a home in North Plainfield with a few extra bedrooms; Sol and Celia closed the store in East New York and headed west across the Hudson River to Plainfield. My mother's sisters, Doris and Pearl, also married and moved to Plainfield. My older brother, Marty, was born in the fall of 1941.
My father tried to put his father-in-law's talents to work in the Plainfield store, but his health deteriorated. He passed away while my mother was carrying me. By the time I came along in April of 1945, Sol was the grandpa I never got to meet.
I often wondered if like, grandpa Joad in Grapes of Wrath, Sol's death actually began years earlier when the new economic realities and customer preferences of the Depression forced him to leave his home in Brooklyn, an urban place he loved, and venture forth to a bustling suburb that was so dependent on automobiles, and to an ill-fitting way of life the men's tailor must have found strange at best, too big in some places, too tight in others. And then there was the thought of him working in his son-in-law's business. Could there be any question his heart wasn't in it?
By the time I attended high school and read Grapes of Wrath my family and I had already mourned Sol's death as well as the death of his wife, my Grandma Celia. She had always been the strength of our immediate family that was now centered in Plainfield and North Plainfield. It was 1955. A massive stroke took her away. I was ten years old at the time.
It should come as no surprise to you that this John Steinbeck novel along with another work of his, Of Mice and Men, both had something to do with me deciding to turn to writing novels late in my life.
I found inspiration and solace in novels that looked at life and death unflinchingly. I'm grateful to have been inspired by the best.
