The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [268]
3 *fella . . . wagon: Land and cattle baron Henry Miller (aka Heinrich Alfred Kreiser; 1827-1916) illegally received patents under the U.S. Reclamation Act of 1850 to thousands of acres of alleged swampland when he testified to land officers that it was only traversable by rowboat, even though the boat was mounted on a wagon and towed by horses.
4 fellas that bribed congressmen: A possible reference to the Teapot Dome Scandal. Private oil operators Harry Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company and Edward Doheny of Pan American Petroleum Company were charged but acquitted of bribing then Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall in 1922 so that Fall would secretly lease the Naval oil reserves in Wyoming’s Teapot Dome Reserves and California’s Elk Hills fields to them.
5 *black-tongue: Used here as a colloquialism for pellagra. See note 2 for Chapter 21 below.
CHAPTER 20
1 *Durham: Bull Durham tobacco.
CHAPTER 21
1 *people: In the typescript, this was followed by a paragraph Steinbeck later eliminated: “Once the Germans in their hordes came to the rich margin of Rome; and they came timidly, saying we have been driven give us land. And the Romans armed the frontier and built forts against the hordes of need. And the legions patrolled the borders, cased in metal, armed with the best steel. And the barbarians came, naked, across the boarder, humbly, humbly. They received the swords in their breasts and marched on; and their dead bore down the swords and the barbarians marched on and took the land. And they were driven by their need, and they conquered with their need. In battle the women fought in the line, and the yellow-haired children lay in the grass with knives to hamstring the legionaries, to snick through the hamstrings of the horses. But the legions had no needs, no wills, no force. And the best trained, best armed troops in the world went down before the hordes of need.”
2 pellagra: A nutritional disorder caused by a poor diet, especially one deficient in niacin (nicotinic acid), a member of the vitamin B family. Symptoms include skin lesions, gastrointestinal discomfort, neurological disturbances, dermatitis, diarrhea, and dementia.
CHAPTER 22
1 *It was still dark when he awakened. . . . maybe we could get you on: For this scene Steinbeck revised an earlier first-person narration, “Breakfast,” which appeared in Pacific Weekly 5 (November 9, 1936), p. 300, and was reprinted in his short story collection, The Long Valley (New York: The Viking Press, 1938).
2 *Farmers’ Association . . . Bank of the West: On the galley sheets Carol Steinbeck responded to a Viking Press editor’s question regarding possible libel suit over these names: “Real names are Associated Farmers and Bank of America.” Steinbeck added: “probably shoot me as it is!”
3 *frawny: In a note addressed to his editor on the galley sheets Steinbeck wrote: “Beautiful word—means sweat and dust mixed.”
4 Salvation Army: International nonsectarian Christian organization founded in England in 1861 began work in the United States in 1880 to serve the impoverished and needy. During the Depression its change from the ideal of providing spiritual and personal counseling to the direct method of providing charity caused resentment in some groups.
CHAPTER 23
1 recruit against Geronimo: In 1885-1886 the U.S. Army, with as many as five thousand white soldiers and five hundred Indian auxiliaries, conducted a vigorous campaign in Arizona and Mexico to recapture Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo (1829-1909) and a small band of his followers who refused to be confined to a reservation in San Carlos, Arizona. In early September, 1886, Geronimo surrendered.
2 “As I Walked through the Streets of Laredo”: “Streets of Laredo” or “The Cowboy’s Lament,” a popular Western ballad about a dying cowboy written around 1860, is modeled on a traditional Irish melody.
CHAPTER 24
1 *“Down Home Blues”: Words and music by Tom Delaney; first recorded by Ethel Waters in April, 1921.
2 Gregorio’s: Fictional name for DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation, founded by Sicilian