Abandoned Farm in Mechanized Wheat Fields, Oklahoma

about 1938

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

13 × 24.4 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-865005

> "The houses were left vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this." Thus John Steinbeck begins his description in *The Grapes of Wrath* (1939) of the scene left by the Joads and other Oklahoma families as they departed for California. He goes on to detail the damage that will be done to the empty houses by the sun, the wind, the animals, the boys from town, and even the weeds, now that the residents are gone: "The weeds sprang up in front of the doorstep, where they had not been allowed, and grass grew up through the porch boards. The houses were vacant and a vacant house falls quickly apart. Splits started up the sheathing from the rusted nails. A dust settled on the floors, and only mouse and weasel and cat tracks disturbed it." The novelist also addressed the impact and attributes of the tractor, now the sole inhabitant of many farms: "When a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is a life and a vitality left. . . . There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from." > > Writing in *An American Exodus* that same year, Paul Shuster Taylor, Dorothea Lan…