Follow up on Migrant Mother

To refresh your memory:  The famous portrait, Migrant Mother, has a George R. Stewart connection.  Stewart knew Dorothea Lange, the photographer, and her husband Dr. Paul Taylor.  Stewart may have written part of STORM in the Taylor-Lange arts and crafts cottage in Berkeley.

(See earlier post for the famous photo and more detail.)

Thanks to a local citizen, Tobie Charles, I discovered that the photo was taken not far from where this is being written – in the small rural town of Nipomo.  Now, with help from a local museum fellow writer Brian Byrne found the actual location of the Nipomo pea pickers camp where the photo was taken.

Here’s a location shot, which shows the Migrant Mother’s family in her tent.  Notice the Eucalyptus trees in the background:

If you look carefully at those trees, and imagine  the same location a 80 years later, this is how it would look:

The exact location won’t be published, to protect the site; but it is certainly one of the most important places in American and world history, and the birthplace of a milestone in photographic art.

Stewart was not alone in his ground-breaking work and ideas.  He was part of a group of scholars, writers, artists, and thinkers who helped create a small enlightenment with big effects, centered around UC Berkeley, and the Central California coast.  Steinbeck, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and many others – including Dorothea Lange and Stewart – helped change the world.  Such changes require a Fellowship of great minds, like these.

George R. Stewart and “The Migrant Mother”

John Lucia, an old friend since Thornton Beach Days and involved in the GRS Project for decades, called excitedly a couple of years ago to say that Stewart had been mentioned in a magazine article.  John is a brilliant, hard-working artisan and craftsman who recycles the treasures of the past into exceptional homes for today.  He’s done this in Hawaii, and is now doing so in Sacramento, in “The Thirties.”  He’s also a restorer of classic cars; John owns one of the best 1950 Ford Woodie Wagons, which he restored himself.

His particular architectural interest is in the Arts and Crafts Movement. so he subscribes to American Bungalow magazine.  That’s where he found the article about Stewart, an article about a historic Berkeley Arts and Crafts cottage once owned by Paul Taylor and Dorothea Lange.  Stewart was friends with the couple; according to the article, he wrote his classic ecological novel Storm in their cottage. (Ribovich, American Bungalow, No. 56, P. 39)

Taylor was a professor at Cal Berkeley, in agricultural economics.  He had the progressive idea that in order to understand the economics of California agriculture, he’d need to understand the people who did the work in the fields.  Since many of those people were Mexican, Taylor decided that he would learn their culture from the inside.  He learned Spanish, spent much time with the workers, and even recorded many of their ballads.

Dorothea Lange  was one of the photographers documenting the plight of desperate migrants from the Midwest and the south who were trying to find some work here to feed their families. Hired by the Farm Security Administration she traveled extensively, photographing the migrants.

She was returning from a field trip along the central California coast when she saw a sign, “Bean Pickers Camp.”  Tired, she didn’t stop.  But about ten miles north of the camp she decided to turn around and go back to see if there was a good subject in the camp.  It was late, raining – not the best conditions for the large 4×5 field Graflex she used – but she went into the camp, found a mother with her children and took a few photographs, including this one:

Florence Owen Thompson and her children –

Migrant Mother

The family, like most of the others in the camp, was hungry to the point of starvation

.After she took the photos Lange drove to her Berkeley cottage, developed and printed the photo.  She told the editor of a local paper about the camp, and the hunger there.  The editor published an article which included the photograph. The government rushed emergency food to the hungry families.

In an article in Popular Photography, in 1960, Dorothea Lange told the story of the photograph:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if
drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my
presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no
questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from
the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told
me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been
living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds
that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to
buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children
huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might
help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about
it.

The photo, and one or two others by Lange, have come to represent the Depression.

She later documented the vicious internment of American citizens who happened to have Japanese ancestry, and similar abuses of American values and ideals.

Stewart’s friendship with Taylor and Lange is another of the extraordinary web of connections he had with the great minds of his time.

But did he write Storm in the Taylor-Lange bungalow?

When I asked Stewart’s descendants – son Jack and daughter Jill – about this story, they discounted it. Jill was especially emphatic, saying that her father did not work that way.  There may be a kernel of truth to the story – maybe he spent a weekend there doing some work on the book, for example.  But it is almost certain that he did not write the book there.

It is an interesting story, though, and I am thankful to John Lucia for starting me off on this research trail.

There’s an interesting footnote to this story.  The bean picker’s camp was located on the Nipomo Mesa – about ten miles from where I’m writing this.  And the place where Dorothea Lange decided to turn around was likely with a mile or two of here, in Arroyo Grande.

 

The GRS Saunter

One of the gifts of the trip to the Western Literature Association (and there were many gifts) was the GRS Saunter.  Cheryll Glotfelty, who encouraged my attendance at the WLA, also suggested that we do some kind of a field trip to sites both literarily and academically connected with George R. Stewart.  I sent out an email to people who might be interested in such a trip, and had a good response.  Baiba Strads, Bancroft Librarian, enthusiastically agreed to coordinate the campus sections.  John and Angela Lucia helped with the Berkeley part of the trip.

So after staying a couple of days with John and Angela at their beautiful Sacramento home, and accompanied by John,  I drove the aging Chinook to the Berkeley Hills, to Indian Rock Ave, and to what (I thought) was Indian Rock Park, to meet Cheryll, Ross and Charlene Wilson Bogert, Willie Stewart and his mother Sallie, and GRS Scholar/Interpreter Alan Kaplan.  The plan was to do some readings from Earth Abides (which is largely set in that area) and have a small ceremony honoring the gathering.  And then to head to the campus, where Baiba had arranged a special showing of archival materials from the George Rippy Stewart Papers.

Well.  The Chinook had a few problems – couldn’t get up the Marin Street hill (which we, as college students, used to zip down in our mid-20th century cars).   I got lost.  And then, when we finally found the park no one showed up.  After a half hour, John and I walked around the Rock –  found the name of that park – Mortar Rock Park – and realized we  were in the wrong place.  John ran to INDIAN Rock Park, where everyone was waiting.  I was very apologetic.   But they didn’t mind.   They’d had a great time talking and enjoying each others company.

We read from Earth Abides, about the carving of “The Year I” in the rock, and the naming of that year.  Then poured some fine Laphroaig (a scotch founded appropriately by descendants of Clan Donald) on the rock in honor of The Year LXIV – which I hope could be named “The Year The Years Began Again,” since we discussed an annual gathering there in honor of Ish and Em.

L-R:  Charlene Wilson Bogert, Angela Lucia, Ross Wilson Bogert, Alan Kaplan, Willie Stewart, Sallie Stewart, Cheryll Glotfelty.

Here’s another photo of Ish’s Country.  The fellow in the foreground is Donald M. Scott, author of blogs and biographies.  Photo by John Lucia.

We sauntered to the Bancroft, where Dee Lapachet Barney – Poet, an editor of the GRS biography, former student, and friend – joined us.  Baiba had arranged for the display of some remarkable manuscript items – GRS’s uncle’s Civil War Journal (written under fire), a hilarious sketch of the GRS – Theodosia wedding by one of Ross Bogert’s ancestors, a letter from Walt Disney to GRS praising his work, a 19th century family photo of the Wilsons, and a page from the manuscript of Earth Abides which showed Stewart’s corrections and re-writing.  There were a few other items.  We also showed the historic 1929 film of GRS, his parents, and the Wilsons, so kindly donated by Ross Bogert Wilson.

Dee and Cheryll had to leave after the Bancroft session.  The rest of us went to the Faculty Club – designed by Bernard Maybeck in the Arts and Crafts style and a model for National Park Service buildings –  where we had a fine dinner, some of the Club’s labelled wine, and a wonderful conversation.  It was the perfect end to a Grand Saunter.

I said farewell to the group, then headed to my motel.  The Golden Bear, on old US 40, was built in 1946.  It’s an icon of the U.S. Highway era and the golden era of motels.  Our family passed it on our adventurous 1949 trip from California to McConnellsville, Ohio.  Perhaps more important – Ish would have passed it many times after the plague; and it’s likely that the dying Ish was carried past it on his last trip, heading west, across the Bay Bridge.

Thus ended the Saunter.  Unless, of course, this becomes an annual event.