If you don't make a crop, why, you don't survive. Ma, Pa, Rose of Sharon and the other Joads piled into an overloaded Hudson and headed west. Past Checotah, Henryetta, Okemah. The Joads drove through Castle and a few miles farther to Boley, where a rusting water tower still broadcasts the name in thick black letters. Through the busy sprawl of Oklahoma City, onto old U.S. Route 66, west onto the rolling prairie where the scent of grass hangs in the air, down the streets of forgotten prairie towns, the ghosts are those of people in flight.
Gas stations stand with vacant windows.
Motel signs flake in the sun. Store fronts sit boarded. In rural western Oklahoma, today's flight is rural to urban. Along the interstate in the middle of golden grasslands looms a fortress of walls and wire. Many in Sayre, Okla., thought the jobs at the new private prison might revitalize the town, says Jack Dungan, a convenience store owner on Route 66.