Born in East L A/Growing up Okie in California | Several famous Okies who migrated East and West | About Okie Without Borders: It wasn't easy growing up Okie in L A

Okie Without Borders
Welcome to my journal
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Okie Without Borders. Click on photo above and listen to welcome message from Chuck Ayers.
From the Red Dirt to the Blue Pacific.
 
A memoir of an Okie Boy growing up in Los Angeles

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Okies traveling the Mother Road to California
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They came to discover a new life. Many Okies stayed in California. A few went back.

"You Okies just follow these two 6's and..."
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The route 66 sign along with the Burma Shave sign were the most watched to the coast.

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Welcome back. Below, read our weekly journal Okie without Borders.

The first Okie in California
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Click on Will Roger image above to read the most recent Okie Without Borders posting

My favorite blog and journal, click here.

How it all began:

No one said it was going to be easy.  Farming down in south central Oklahoma on hard red dry dirt couldn’t have been more daunting for a young Okie family.  Especially working with 40-acres of parched red dirt.  Dry sand and rock that resisted growing anything.  Maybe a little corn and possibly a small patch of peanuts.  It took all the water that was carried in buckets across the county road from the old school house pump to barely make it through the day.  Just enough water to drink, bathe the kids, and water the remaining chickens.  However, the corn and peanuts had to wait for the next rain.  Rain, which came with increasing infrequency.

It was Oklahoma 1941 and surviving was not getting easier.  What to do?  Where to go?  When will it ever end?  Read all the postings above and find out.  Click on the Will Rogers icon and read all about Okies in California.

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Born in East L A almost beneath the shadows of the Willard Battery water tower, which also happened to be east of the B F Goodrich tire pressing plant on Olympic Boulevard.  Consequently, down wind from the pungent odors of pressing hot rubber tires. 

 

Our little Okie home was a small white adobe house on Simmons Avenue half way between Olympic and Ferguson Avenue in East Los Angeles 22 California.  My parents had been recent transplants from southern rural Oklahoma where they had left in 1941.  So, being born 1944 in East L A, I am purebred blue collar California Okie.  So, I write about my Okie past and comment on our sociological/cultrual present.  My daily blog, The Red Dirt Post  is written on current events and Okie Without Borders, is about my early Okie life growing up in Los Angeles.  I hope you enjoy visiting my weekly journal,
Okie Without Borders.

Okie Without BordersGrowing Up Okie in East L Ahttp://www.chuckayers.com/okie/

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Okie Without Borders
Copyright Chuck Ayers, 2008, 2012 
http://www.chuckayers.com/okie/
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