Lousy Tips In An Icon Of The Great Depression
A truck in Sallisaw bears a 1931 Oklahoma license plate, alluding to the Dust Bowl migration. Photo by Michael Williamson/The Washington Post
SALLISAW, Okla--The only indication that Michael and I were in the hometown of the Joads – the fictional family of John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath" – was a rusty red truck laden with pots and pans. On the doors were three faded words: "Bakersfield or Bust."
Other than that – an inside joke passersby either got or didn’t – there was no hint that we were in a place that for many represents the Dust Bowl migration. No sign that even if fiction didn’t exactly mirror reality (no one knows why Steinbeck picked this particular place as a setting), Sallisaw remains an icon of the Great Depression.
There used to be an annual festival here bearing the name of the book, but some argued it perpetuated a negative, inaccurate characterization of the community, so now the celebration is called “Diamond Daze,” said Melanie Mayo.
She runs a consignment shop that her mother, Glynda Holmes, owns. The worse the economy does, the more business the shop receives – and sales have been up, she said.
“When my mom first bought this store, if we had a $30 or $40 day, we felt it was a good day,” said Mayo, 48. “Now, we’re having $300 and some $400 days. It’s increased that much in three years.”
Whether or not Sallisaw wants to be associated with the Great Depression (what town would), its residents are feeling the wrath of this modern-day recession.
Melanie Mayo has seen the presence of the recession through increased sales at her mother's consignment shop. Photo by Michael Williamson/The Washington Post
People who used to come to the consignment shop to drop off clothes are now staying to shop. Abercrombie & Fitch shirts, which sell for $6.98, and Lucky Brand jeans, which sell for $15.98, go most quickly.
As if on cue, as Mayo explained how second-hand stores are seeing first-time customers, Robin Stites walked into the shop and headed toward the back. I found her there perusing a rack of dresses, looking not completely comfortable.
“It’s embarrassing,” she said.
She wouldn't have been here a year ago, but that was before her income as a bartender was cut by more than half.
“Instead of $600 a week, now I’m down to $300 if I’m lucky,” Stites said. “That’s why I’m in a resale shop.”
“I’m in here looking for an outfit, thinking maybe I could get something for $10 to go with something I already have,” she said, adding that she had just come from another store, “because I wasn’t going to pay $17 for a shirt. Isn’t that pathetic? In the past, I would have gotten two or three.”
At 47, Stites said life is now harder than when she was in her 20s and raising two children on her own. Her sons are now ages 19 and 23. But her customers at the bar are facing their own financial struggles – “They just want to give up on life, too, or come in and get so drunk they don’t know nothing,” she said – so it doesn’t surprise her that some leave two quarters as a tip.
“When I used to give them change, they used to tell me, ‘Keep it,’” she said. “Now, they want their change back. The bill might be for $2.25 and they give me $3 and they wait for the 75 cents.”
To make ends meet, she now spends her days off shopping at yard sales for items she can re-sell at an antique shop called Dana’s Corner. She rents a small booth there for $40 a month.
Robin Stites has seen her income cut by half in the last year and now sells refurbished items to make ends meet. Photo by Michael Williamson/The Washington Post
I asked her if Michael and I could see the items she was selling and she agreed to meet us at the shop, which sat on a corner only a few blocks away. When we arrived, we found she had more of a nook than a booth, the shelves lined with everything from a Wonder Woman Barbie doll to a Bassett Hound cookie jar. Nearby was her dining room table, where her sons had done their homework and eaten dinner. She was selling it for $100.
“It won’t get $100,” Stites said. “I’m thinking it might go for $50 or $60.”
Sales have been slow, said Dana Talbot, 53, the owner of the antique shop. She sat at the front desk pulling strings off buttons.
Nearly daily, someone comes into the shop trying to sell her an item. “If I can, I try to help them out,” she said. “But I can’t everyday.”
“Dana’s got a good heart,” Stites said..
“There was a man who came by yesterday and he had a dresser," Talbot said. "He said he would take $10 for it, just so he could get some gas.”
“See, we’re in it,” Stites said of the recession. “This town is in it.”
By
Theresa Vargas
|
July 20, 2009; 11:53 AM ET
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Posted by: BostonProgressive | July 20, 2009 3:31 PM | Report abuse
The GOP, the dems, the libertarians ... everyone is at fault. Bakersfield or bust? :) Bakersfield is considered the armpit of CA by most Californians. Yet it and Fresno were 2 of the fastest growing cities in the US. Why? The recession which has been here for at least 3 - 5 if not more. Jobs and low cost housing in Bakersfield and Fresno. Now they aren't growing. Guess its a depression now? If not for the stimulus package it would be. Unfortunately, that package only hides the growing problem ... it doesn't address it.
The financial windfall gleaned from WWII is all used up. Really it was pretty much gone at the real end of the war ... about 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The real problem is that it isn't just a "depression" economically, its also a "depression" existentially.
Perhaps, instead of opining the same political messages and hubris it may be time to listen to those astronauts who came to Washington on a visit. Its time to reach to the stars, to set some new goals, to find meaning in existence both as individuals and as a country. And I'm afraid 2 decent rooms, a bath and maybe a decent job just won't do anymore ... we've grown a lot in more ways than one since the last depression.
Maybe its time to reach out for Mars ... something the great empires of the past could ever dream of doing. For them the moon would be the most amazing of feats! Time to stretch out, try to be more ... its painful, and risky ... and the only reward may be for each to attempt it at all!
As Frankl observed in the concentration camps he "visited": a man would give up all his clothes, his food, his life sustenance ... because he was a saint? No, because the Nazi's were trying to take away the one thing that stood between survival and not: meaning in life and the hope it represents. That man decided he would not let that happen. He wanted to survive and he knew he could not survive without meaning ... the higher the meaning the greater his resolve to go on. Attitude: the only thing you can always control when everything else seems outside of your control.
Posted by: periculum | July 20, 2009 4:07 PM | Report abuse
There’s a great article on the web site for Rolling Stone about the 5 bubbles, including housing, the gas prices last year and how congress put in deregulation laws that allowed the giant banks rip off the entire world legally. Guess who is biggest player in these rip offs, Goldman Sachs, they are the only ones that made a profit in this crummy economy.
Posted by: votethebumsout | July 20, 2009 4:44 PM | Report abuse
Mr. Boston Progressive:
Reagan guilty? it sounds like Perón, Chavez, Evo Morales and son on. We have a lot of guys like those, that speake like you, I'd want to interchange all of them for some Reagans yours.
Your problem is too high wages, then you can´t compete. In the past against Japan, now against China.
Posted by: neounicato1916 | July 20, 2009 5:10 PM | Report abuse
This is what has trickled down. Tell me again why the stimulus went to Wall Street?
Posted by: SarahBB | July 20, 2009 5:18 PM | Report abuse
We're in this mess because of the Reagan mentality: deficit spending, unregulated markets. Bill Clinton didn't help matters by signing off on the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
There were plenty of bubbles out there but the de-regulation of the financial industry and its subsequent collapse is what turned this into a crisis. I see it as a failure of Democrats to resist the irresponsible policies popularized by Reagan, perpetuated by his acolytes.
Posted by: JohnDoug | July 20, 2009 6:20 PM | Report abuse
i live twenty four miles from salisaw and am all too familiar with its political preferences. serious senators such as boren and kerr have long since given way to clowns like inhofe and coburn. people in trailers with a half dozen children and living on food stamps listen to limbaugh religiously and amen half wit baptist preachers as they rail on the evils of abortion, gay marriage, and socialized medicine. they hang pictures of sarah palin and take glenn beck for a genius. only the lulu land called utah gave mccain a larger vote margin.
perhaps there is some truth in it: people get the kind of government they deserve.
Posted by: jimfilyaw | July 20, 2009 8:37 PM | Report abuse
Make no mistake about it.We are in Great Depression 2,brought to you by Reagan and Bush.May Reagan rot in hell and Bush die a painful ,lingering death.In a better country he would be hanged.
Posted by: hyroller56 | July 20, 2009 9:24 PM | Report abuse
Such a pity that Vargas' content is motivated by the politics of sub-group partisan malice rather than by reality. A sorry state for news "reporting" to have sunk to, especially given the current government-created mess.
Posted by: TQWoods | July 20, 2009 9:46 PM | Report abuse
every one should remember that old classic movie with Henry Fonda in it about the Kansas dust bowl and the migrant worker camps after viewing that film and know seeing Calif leaving in a mass exudes. will Kansas except them with open arms and no stimulus from the feds i dought it Kansas made the Japanese leave the camps their after the war yes yes history repeats its self again;;;;;;;;;;
Posted by: caveman1957 | July 20, 2009 10:45 PM | Report abuse
Regardless of which party is in the White House or which party holds the majority in Congress, one thing has to change to move this country of ours forward - voting strictly along party lines. How can Congress claim to represent their constituents when each party predominantly votes "all for one and one for all." Surely all in one party can't totally agree on issues such as how to deal with health care, gun control, stimulus money, appointees to government posts, immigration, foreign policy etc. Can it be that their concern for being re-elected and the support of special interest groups supercedes their duty to represent the interests of their constituents? I'm afraid so!
Posted by: jwschiesl | July 20, 2009 11:08 PM | Report abuse
"This is the legacy that Ronald Regan and the worship at the alter of the "free market" have left us.
Untrammeled greed and the preferential treatment given to the rich have left everybody else to fend for themselves and to beg for the scraps of the corporate owners.
Cuts in healthcare resources, the bait-and-switch of pensions for 401K plans coupled with the deregulation of the financial industry have left us with usurious interest rates, vasty diminished resources for retirement and phenominal rates of foreclosures and bankruptcies. And now even bankrupties are rigged to be a giveaway to the financial industry.
And it won't get any better any time soon.
Posted by: BostonProgressive | July 20, 2009 3:31 PM"
You left out one important factor- Reagan began the serious attacks on the CPI which has destroyed ordinary American's purchasing power by holding down Wages and Social Security Benefits as prices soar. I estimate my Real SS Benefit has fallen 10 to 20 Percent since 1990 and that is a big bite.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
Posted by: mchaun | July 21, 2009 12:17 AM | Report abuse
Mr. Neounicator(?)
You can't spell.
Posted by: sandrags | July 23, 2009 7:46 AM | Report abuse
The comments to this entry are closed.
This is the legacy that Ronald Regan and the worship at the alter of the "free market" have left us.
Untrammeled greed and the preferential treatment given to the rich have left everybody else to fend for themselves and to beg for the scraps of the corporate owners.
Cuts in healthcare resources, the bait-and-switch of pensions for 401K plans coupled with the deregulation of the financial industry have left us with usurious interest rates, vasty diminished resources for retirement and phenominal rates of foreclosures and bankruptcies. And now even bankrupties are rigged to be a giveaway to the financial industry.
And it won't get any better any time soon.
ANd, of course, the GOP and the pseudo-libertarians will blame it all on Obama, because, heaven forbid, they even have the intellectual honesty to admit they may have been so wrong.