Some Will Rob You With a Six Gun, Some With A Fountain Pen:
Social Work Education and the Ecological Folk Wisdom of Woody Guthrie
A version of this paper was presented at the 2007 North Coast Education
Encounter.
Ronnie Swartz, MSW, Ph.D., LCSW
Baccalaureate Program Director and Assistant Professor
Department of Social Work
Humboldt State University
Arcata, CA 95521
(707) 826-4562
http://www.humboldt.edu/~rjs19
Email Ronnie Swartz
Many thanks go out to Cassandra Tex, MBA, Assistive Technology Specialist for the
Humboldt State University Student Disability Resource Center. Because of her help
this piece will be available to a much wider audience than otherwise might have
been possible.
Introduction to the Resource
Audio of the "Introduction to the Resource"
Ecological systems theory and social justice are general elements of social work
education. While case studies, textbooks, and professional journal articles are
common methods for exploring these features of social work, folk music offers an
alternative approach for unpacking these ideas. The music of Woody Guthrie serves
as a strong scaffold for delivering social work education. His pictures of social
injustice and systemic interconnectedness are engaging, responsive to varied
learning styles, and memorable.
The following resource can assist instructors as they make connections between
people's individual lives and the systemic contexts of influence that are consistently
transacting with people's lives. The resource supports instructors who are
committed to inclusive learning strategies designed to universally engage students,
those who know they live with a disability, and those who are not aware of living
with a disability. Moreover, the topic itself is focused on people's varying
experiences of social inclusion or exclusion based on difference.
This resource, "Some Will Rob You With a Six Gun, Some With A Fountain Pen: Social
Work Education and the Ecological Folk Wisdom of Woody Guthrie" uses a simple
html structure and is formatted for screen reader accessibility. There are clearly
defined links embedded that allow the reader to connect with more information on
specific topics.
Due to copyright restrictions, this resource is not able to include full lyrics or audio
performances for some of the songs presented. Fair use laws allow for selections of
lyrics to be presented. However, for each song discussed there is a link to the full
lyrics if they are not included, and an audio clip of the song is available through
other resources. The traditional song "Buffalo Skinners" has no copyright holder.
For that song, a link is available to a song performance by the author. It should be
noted that instructors may display full lyrics as well as play entire songs for
educational purposes in the classroom.
I hope you enjoy using this resource to support your efforts to teach about social
processes, social change, and social justice in a classroom that is universally
designed for learning.
Abstract
Ecological systems theory and social justice are general elements of social work
education. While case studies, textbooks, and professional journal articles are
common methods for exploring these features of social work, folk music offers an
alternative approach for unpacking these ideas. Woody Guthrie's music serves as a
strong scaffold for delivering social work education. His pictures of social injustice
and systemic interconnectedness are engaging, responsive to varied learning styles,
and memorable.
Key Words:
Social work education, ecological theory, social justice, Woody Guthrie, folk music
A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once,
but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over.
--Joe Hill, November 29, 1914, in a letter written from the Salt Lake City jail
[I] just keep a-plowing right down the avenue watching what I can see and listening
to what I can hear and trying to learn about everybody I meet everyday and try to
make one part of the community feel like they know the other part and one end of it
help the other end.
--Woody Guthrie, in a letter to Alan Lomax (Garman, 2000, p. 89)
Introduction
We are all interconnected. It is a familiar refrain in progressive politics and what has
been referred to as "The New Science" (Capra, 1996; Zukav, 1979). From layperson
versions of Buddhist and Taoist teachings (see Hoff, 1982; Nhat Hanh, 1987), to
popular psychology's spin on quantum physics (see Pearce, 1971), to the Gaia
Movement (see Lovelock, 1979/2000), to religio-spiritual writings from privileged
white men (see Bach, 1977; Quinn, 1995; Redfield, 1995) there are claims that we
humans are all connected to each other, indeed we are all connected to every living
thing through a "web of life" (Capra, 1996).
Complex interconnections linking people, communities, politics, economics, and
culture have been explored and mapped out through various scientific enterprises
lumped together under the moniker “ecological perspectives.” Those that have risen
to the standing of “theories” contain explicit hypotheses and distinct criteria for
discerning various ecological contexts (see, for example, Bateson, 1972, 1979;
Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Maturana & Varela, 1992). The following piece is not
concerned with these. Rather, I am interested in unpacking the folk ecology of
Woody Guthrie’s singing and songwriting. That is, I am interested in highlighting the
ways in which Woody reflects a “contextual ecology” perspective, or, alternatively,
an “ecological context” perspective in his songs; at least in a few of his songs (i.e., the
ones I’ve selected from his repertoire).
By “folk ecology” I mean the general idea that there are multiple systems interacting
to bring about individual and group experience. These are songs that demonstrate
the complexity, richness, and interconnection between physical, biological,
psychological, social, cultural, economic, and numinous contexts. The songs are
“folk” ecologies because they are not grounded in disciplinary discourses. There are
no distinct theories being supported, tested, espoused, claimed, researched,
evaluated, or critiqued. Ani DiFranco’s definition of folk works rather well for these
purposes, “It’s subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and
their struggle against authority” (Rodgers, 2000, p. 158).
The songs reviewed below offer a rich scaffold for teaching critical perspectives in
social work education, research, policy, and practice. Engaging for students,
inclusive of varied methods of learning, and applicable to contemporary social
problems, when I perform the below songs on my guitar or play recorded versions, I
demonstrate to students that social work is so much more than removing kids from
their parents (which is what most students in my general education Introduction to
Social Work course think social workers do).
By presenting these particular songs, I am not trying to categorize Woody Guthrie. I
am not trying to inscribe him with an essential identity. Woody certainly sang about
love, loss, patriotism, and adventure too. He sang other people’s songs as well. I am
focusing on one quality of his songs, the quality of explicitly (or fairly explicitly)
representing an ecological perspective. I’ve sifted through almost all of Woody
Guthrie’s published work (many songs of which he did not get around to recording),
and distilled a handful of songs that in part or in their entirety reference ecological
ideas about context. So, in picking songs, I was not reading for protest songs or
songs of social justice or any defined category of songs (Bob Dylan once said, “I
didn’t think I was protesting anything any more than I thought that Woody Guthrie
songs were protesting anything. I didn’t think of Woody as a protest singer” [Dylan,
2003, p. 83]). Rather, I looked for songs that represent, characterize, and/or embody
a folk ecology perspective. Notwithstanding my attempt at inclusiveness, it turns out
that most of the songs I’ve picked tend to have a social justice angle in their
depiction, description, representation, or symbolization of an ecological systems
perspective. As social justice is a key commitment of the social work program in
which I teach, this feature in Woody’s songs makes for a good fit.
There are two final qualifications I’d like to make. First, I do not claim to be a
musicologist or a music critic. I am not trying to analyze the songs I present. I am not
trying to interpret the text. I intend to work with what is explicitly stated “on the
surface” of the lyrics. So, while some songs may describe ecological connections
throughout the lyrics, others may only contain a verse—even a phrase or two—that
meets my criteria. Still others best represent ecological folk wisdom by being joined
with other songs in sequence. Secondly, my clearly stated focus is on how Woody
presents ecological systems ideas in his songs so they can be used as a method of
teaching social work, not on the artist himself. I will bring in a bit of information
here or there about Woody, but my primary reason for doing so is to offer a context
for his writing. I am a social work practitioner and educator. In my teaching I use
Woody’s work to teach ecological systems theory and social justice. In my practice, I
am informed by the commitments to justice, equality, freedom, and respect for
workers Woody demonstrated.
Talkin’ Columbia
Talkin' Columbia - Audio Sample
Talkin' Columbia - Full Lyrics
Woody Guthrie’s brief stint as the lyricist for the Bureau of Reclamation—the United
States Department of the Interior’s damming program—is fairly well known. (As
many folks also know he got a power substation on the Columbia River named after
him).
I made up 26 songs about the Bonneville Dam and the thunderous foamy waters of
the rapids and cascades, the wild and windward watersprays from the high Sheliloh
falls, and the folks living in the little shack house just about a mile from the end of
the line. The Department of Interior folks got ahold of me and took me into a clothes
closet there at the Bonneville Power Administration house in Portland and melted
my songs down onto records (Santelli & Davidson, 1999, p. 8).
“Talkin’ Columbia” (also referred to as “Talkin’ Columbia Blues”) is a fine example of
how Woody could coin an “anthem” that is as subversive as it is patriotic (also see,
for example, “This Land Is Your Land”). A “dust bowl refugee” himself, Woody knew
the suffering that accompanied drought. By 1941, when he wrote his songs about
the Columbia River, lots of folks had already left their land in Kansas, Oklahoma, and
Texas for what they thought would be the greener “pastures of plenty” in California,
Oregon, and Washington (“Thought about the dust, an’ thought about the
sand/Thought about the people, an’ thought about the land/Folks runnin’ round all
over creation/Lookin’ for some kind of little place”). Moving west came with its own
ecological price as noted in the song trinity “Buffalo Skinners,” “Pastures of Plenty,”
and “Plane Wreck At Los Gatos (Deportee)” below. Columbia River water, however,
was abundant. It drains one of the largest volumes of water in North America
(Reisner, 1993). Instead of letting all that water “go to waste,” dams were built up
and down its banks to generate “e-lec-trici-ty.” Good came out of this: irrigation for
fields to grow food (“Gaoline goin’ up/Wheat comin’ down), easier commercial and
industrial travel, cheap energy. But what did these factories that sprang up
everywhere because of cheap electricity produce? “Everything from fertilizers to
sewing machines/And atomic bedrooms and plastic.” Pretty soon, Woody sings
(warns?), “everything’s gonna be plastic.” Much of the electricity produced by the
dams on the Columbia River was used for aluminum plants that built munitions for
the U.S. military (Reisner, 1993). The positive and negative effects of hydroelectric
projects have been felt by scores of communities. Many have decided that some
dams have outlived their use and are working for decommission. But cheap energy
is a powerful bind. Woody cautions us, “Course I don’t like dictators none
myself/but then I think the whole country had ought to be run by e-lec-trici-ty.”
“Talkin’ Columbia” might be considered an ambiguous song. Is it pro-dam or antidam? I don’t think it is either. It’s just a song that portrays the complexities of
modern living. Woody dealt with complexities throughout his repertoire, as a folk
ecology must. Pete Seeger noted, “Woody was briefly in the Communist Party. But
what did being a Communist mean? It meant that you were in favor of all the
working people in the world getting together so that there never again would need
to be a war. Woody went along with that. Even so, he wasn’t a pacifist. ‘I don’t want a
war, but if somebody is going to lynch me just for my politics, I’m going to fight
back,’ is what Woody used to say” (Santelli & Davidson, 1999, p. 31). Garman (2000)
describes the “folk” aspect of Woody’s ecological perspective,
Guthrie represented the lives of working people, preserved their cultural traditions,
and worked on their behalf to convert the promises of freedom and equality into
democratic reality. In his efforts to take culture out of the lecture hall and put it in
the factory, fields, and labor camps, he transformed the poet hero into a guitarcarrying, class-conscious balladeer p. 83).
Lindbergh
Lindbergh - Audio Sample
Woody didn’t always raise consciousness by protesting in front of political figures.
He rendered visible the contextual connections in people’s lives and experiences
through songs that take no clear position, like “Talkin’ Columbia.” But Woody also
wrote songs that gave no doubt about his opinion. Alan Lomax said, “He felt that
songs should wake people up, should help people understand their environment
better, and be more willing to do something about it” (Garman, 2000, p. 89). At first
Woody needed these connections made for him to see them too. He said, “I never did
really know that the fight had been going on so long and so bad. I never had been
able to look out over and across the slum section nor a sharecropper farm and
connect it up with the owner and the landlord and the guards and the police”
(Garman, 2000, p. 85).
Woody was surely patriotic. He re-wrote versions of some of his earlier songs to
rally support for United States involvement in World War II. But he also highlighted
the contradictions that are ever present in a contextual ecology. America’s hero,
Charles Lindbergh, engaged in political activities that stood in contrast to the
popular discourse publicly surrounding him. Woody tried to make this known. Some
ten years after Charles Lindbergh successfully flew a solo flight across the Atlantic
Ocean, Woody excoriated him for being a fascist sympathizer in his song
“Lindbergh”.
Mister Charlie Lindbergh, he flew to old Berlin,
Got 'im a big Iron Cross, and he flew right back again
To Washington, Washington.
Misses Charlie Lindbergh, she come dressed in red,
Said: "I'd like to sleep in that pretty White house bed
In Washington, Washington."
Lindy said to Annie: "We'll get there by and by,
But we'll have to split the bed up with Hoover, Clark, and Nye
In Washington, Washington."
Hitler wrote to Lindy, said "Do your very worst,"
So Lindy started an outfit that he called America First
In Washington, Washington.
All around the country, Lindbergh he did fly,
And the gasoline was paid for by Hoover, Clark, and Nye
In Washington, Washington.
Lindy said to Hoover: "We'll do the same as France:
Make a deal with Hitler, and then we'll get our chance
In Washington, Washington."
Then they had a meetin', and all the Firsters come,
Come on a-walkin', they come on a-runnin',
(Washington, Washington)
Yonder comes father Coughlin, wearin' the silver chain,
Cash on his stomach and Hitler on the brain.
(Washington, Washington)
Mister John L. Lewis would sit and straddle a fence,
'Cause his daughter signed with Lindbergh, and we ain't seen her since
(Washington, Washington)
Hitler said to Lindy: "Stall 'em all you can,
We're gonna bomb Pearl Harbor with the help of old Japan."
(Washington, Washington)
Then on a December mornin', the bombs come from Japan,
Wake Island and Pearl Harbor, kill fifteen hundred men.
(Washington, Washington)
Lindy tried to join the army, but they wouldn't let 'im in,
'Fraid he'd sell to Hitler a few more million men.
(Washington, Washington)
So I'm gonna tell you people: If Hitler's gonna be beat,
The common workin' people has got to take the seat
In Washington, Washington.
And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checks:
They say "America First," but they mean "America Next!"
In Washington, Washington.
Words from http://www.lindberghkidnappinghoax.com/guthrie.html.
Woody tried to make other contradictions known as well, to the people who came
out as losers when the dominant sides of a struggle marginalized the invisible or
powerless sides. He said, “The Rich folks must have some way of making us poor
folks believe their way, so they put out radio programs, sermons, moving pictures,
books, magazines, and all sorts of silly advertising. This junk is piled around in the
world like a big pile of trash, but most folks believe it, and are sunk in it, and never
try to get out of it” (Garman, 2000, p. 117). But Woody was not satisfied with the
limited role of a troubadour: singing the news so people can be enlightened. Woody
wanted action. Woody engaged in action. He said, “Our job ain’t so much to go way
back into history. Our job is the Here & Now. Today.” (Garman, 2000, p. 117). This
perspective is evident in the following story about Woody’s time on a Merchant
Marine ship:
The most immediate wall, [Woody’s shipmate Jimmy] Longhi recalls, was the one
separating the black and white troops on Woody’s ship. Hearing the commotion in
the toilet [when Woody was singing to white troops during an attack in the Atlantic],
a white officer arrived to summon Woody back to the white soldiers waiting for him
to resume his performance. Woody refused to return unless the black soldiers could
come with him. Refusing to accept the officer’s insistence that segregation was a
policy he didn’t support but was powerless to change, Woody insisted on seeing
higher and higher-ranking officers until he found himself face to face with the ship’s
commander. Determining that the commander was a fan of Benny Goodman’s swing
band, Woody pointed out that Goodman’s group included black musicians Teddy
Wilson and Lionel Hampton. Although many of the clubs Goodman played in banned
integrated “dance bands,” Goodman circumvented the Jim Crow laws by defining
Wilson and Hampton as “concert performers.” When the commander acquiesced,
Woody and [the black crewmembers’ commanding officer, Daniel] Rutledge proudly
led the black troops back to the “white” area of the ship where Woody’s “no
dancing” pledge lasted about as long as it did in the clubs where Goodman played (p.
76).
The Flood and the Storm
The Flood and the Storm - Audio Sample
The Flood and the Storm - Full Lyrics
In “The Flood and the Storm,” the first song on his Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti
album, Woody highlights the interconnections between labor, economic growth,
war, poverty, and political ambition. With lines like, “Uncle Sammy has tied every
nation in this world/In his long old leather money bags” Woody foretold the neoliberal globalization spurred by post-World War II institutions like the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund. The current plight of many developing
nations under the thumb of trade liberalization and structural adjustment is
exemplified in the lyrics,
Keep sending your ships across these waters;
We'll borrow all the money you can lend.
We must buy new clothes, new plows, and fact'ries,
And we need golden dollars for to spend.
Ever' dollar in the world, well, it rolled and it rolled,
And it rolled into Uncle Sammy's door.
A few got richer, and richer, and richer,
But the poor folks kept but gettin' poor.
Woody took up the cause of posthumously defending two Italian immigrants, Nicole
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were executed in 1927 after having been tried
and found guilty of robbery and murder. Later pardoned by Massachusetts
Governor Michael Dukakis, Sacco and Vanzetti had been identified as Communists.
Woody, who had been a member of the Communist party himself, was outraged at
the treatment these two hard workers received because of their political ideology;
this in a country that proudly proclaimed a foundation on the freedom to believe
whatever one wants to believe.
Buffalo Skinners, Pastures of Plenty, and Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)
While “Buffalo Skinners” is not a Woody Guthrie original—it’s a traditional song
with many subtle variations—he certainly is responsible for bringing it to the
public’s attention. When paired up with “Pastures of Plenty” and “Plane Wreck at
Los Gatos (Deportee)” the trilogy of songs is, perhaps, the finest example I have ever
come across of ecological folk wisdom manifested through song.
Back before “The West” had been settled by American colonists, a huge swath of
land in the middle of what we now refer to as the United States was covered in one
of the few ecologies native only to this country. The tall grass prairie depended on a
complex “network” of relationships, as do all ecological environments. Included in
this ecology were: the wild buffalo that tread on the ground, ate the tall grasses, and
left behind nutrients in their scat; and an enormous underground reservoir of water,
the Ogallala Aquifer, located very near the layer of earth from which the tall grasses
drank. In the late 1800s, westward expansion of the country began in earnest.
Certainly there were already settlements in the west, but the mass migration out of
the crowding communities on the eastern shores of America had not yet begun in
earnest.
On the way west, cowboys, ranchers, and other “pioneers” reduced the population of
wild buffalo from some 50 million, to several thousand. There are complexities in
this story, of course. And herein lies some of the ecological folk wisdom of “Buffalo
Skinners.” The folks making money on hunting buffalo and forging a trail for others
to follow were not always the same folks doing the actual work. There was money to
be made through settling the West, but not by the poor and/or unemployed.
Exploitation of “cowboys” was much more common than honoring them, the latter
being expected through distillation of public historical discourse.
Buffalo Skinners
Buffalo Skinners - Audio File
Come all you old time cowboys,
And listen to my song,
Please do not grow weary,
I'll not detain you long.
Concerning some wild cowboys,
Who did agree to go,
Spend the summer pleasant,
On the trail of the Buffalo.
I found myself in Griffin,
In the spring of '83,
When a well known famous drover,
Came walking up to me.
Said, “How do you do, young fellow,
Well how would you like to go,
And spend the summer pleasant,
On the trail of the Buffalo?”
Well me being out of work right then,
To the drover I did say,
“Going out on the Buffalo Road,
Depends on the pay.
If you will pay good wages,
And transportation to and fro,
I think I might go with you,
On the hunt of the Buffalo.”
“Of course I'll pay good wages,
And transportation too,
If you will agree to work for me,
Until the season's through.”
But if you do get homesick,
And try to run away,
You will starve to death,
Out on the trail and also lose your pay.”
Well with all his flattering talking,
He signed up quite a crew,
Some 10 or 12 in number,
Some able bodied men.
The trip it was a pleasant one,
As we hit the westward road,
Until we crossed old Boggy Creek,
In old New Mexico.
There our pleasures ended,
And our troubles began.
A lightening storm hit us,
And made the cattle run.
Got all full of stickers,
>From the cactus that did not grow,
And the outlaws watching,
To pick us off in the hills of Mexico.
Well our working season ended,
And the drover would not pay,
If you had not drunk too much,
You are all in debt to me.
But the cowboys never had heard,
Such a thing as a bankrupt law,
So we left that drover’s bones to bleach,
On the Plains of the Buffalo.
Westward expansion was not a matter of a bunch of pioneers going as far out west
as they could go and then filling in the gap back eastward. Folks would travel out
various distances. Infrastructure made this possible: trains, small towns near train
stops, and markets. Food couldn’t solely be shipped from the commercial centers of
the East. It had to be produced locally. To accomplish this, tens of millions of heads
of cattle were planted on the old stomping grounds of the buffalo. But cows and
buffalo don’t tread the same way, they don’t eat the same way, and their scat is not
comparable. So the long grass prairie was beaten and eaten to the ground. For
thousands and thousands of years the tall grass prairie could rebound from periodic
catastrophes (like fire) because longstanding ecological systems have measures
built in to maintain homeostasis (Bateson, 1972). But besides adding cattle,
pioneering ranchers removed something: water. To nourish their cattle with drink
and with food, farmers needed a good supply of water. It takes a lot of water to grow
the food that was used to feed cattle and, to a lesser extent, people. That water came
from the Ogallala Aquifer, right under the ground. As more and more wells were
drilled and pumped, the Ogallala Aquifer dropped. And when it dropped, the tall
grass prairie died. When the tall grass prairie died, a crucial binding agent for the
top surface soil was lost. And so, when the wind blew strong, long, and low—as it
has for millennia across the midwest—the soil blew with it. Thus the Dust Bowl.
Pastures of Plenty
Pastures of Plenty - Audio Sample
Woody Guthrie wrote lots of dust bowl songs (he even released a collection called
Dust Bowl Ballads). “Pastures of Plenty” can pick up the story where the demise of
buffalo left off. As the Ogallala Aquifer drained away, and as the dust bowl made
living in the middle part of America difficult, masses of settlers moved westward in
search of food, water, and work. Stories told of endless fields of produce just waitin’
to be harvested...and not enough hands to do the pickin’. Washington, Oregon,
California were the pastures of plenty.
Now, to become the pastures of plenty, Washington, Oregon, and California were in
the midst of the largest public works project ever attempted by human beings
(excuse the hyperbole). Damming some of America’s largest rivers, diverting the
water through canals, pumping it over mountains, and pushing turbines for
electricity along the way was a major feat. And an expensive one at that. We’re still
paying for it, directly, through federal and state tax dollars. For example, in the
2005-2006 California State Budget, $59.1 million from the State’s general fund
(largely personal income tax and sales tax) went toward lining the All-American and
Coachella canals. “Lining” canals slows down evaporation, which “wastes” an
extraordinary volume of costly diverted water. This is five times the funding that
juvenile delinquency prevention, for example, received (California Department of
Finance, 2005; Schwarzenegger, 2005). Most of this diverted water is provided
cheaply (subsidized by American taxpayers) to large agribusinesses, such as those
growing cotton in California’s central valley.
Where I live, in Humboldt County, California, one of the regions six rivers, the Eel,
loses 90% of its water to Sonoma County, where it makes the continued sprawling
of Santa Rosa possible, and to Napa County, where it supports the region’s wine
industry. Another one of our rivers, the Trinity, is diverted into the California
Aqueduct via a pump over the Trinity mountains which requires an enormous
amount of energy. This leaves the water near the mouth of the Klamath (into which
the Trinity runs) shallow and warm. In 2003, over 80,000 salmon died trying to
make their way to spawning grounds on the Klamath. While this was a huge
economic loss, it was an even greater spiritual loss to the Yurok people, who have
shared a kin relationship with the salmon since before the European-American
settlers’ history was written.
It’s a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot, dusty road
Out of your dust bowl and westward we rolled
And your desert was hot and your mountains were cold
I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
Slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of your city, you've seen us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind
California and Arizona, I make all your crops
And it’s north up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vines
To set on your table, your light sparklin’ wine
Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
>From that Grand Coulee Dam where the water runs down
Every state in this union, us migrants have been
We work in your fight and we’ll fight ‘till we win
Well it’s always we ramble that river and I
All along your green valleys I’ll work till I die
My land I’ll defend with my life if it be
‘Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free
Words by Woody Guthrie. TRO. Copyright 1960 (Renewed) 1963 (Renewed) Ludlow
Music, Inc., New York, NY. Used by Permission.
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee) - Audio Sample
Those “migrants” referred to in “Pastures of Plenty” were the “Okies” and other
poor, white migrants who came to the West and Northwest in search of work. By the
late 1940s, migrants were largely folks from Mexico who came over the border to
seek a better life for their families. The song “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportees)”
offers a glimpse into the effects of the political dimension of an ecological systems
perspective. The song begins by reminding listeners that the United States
government continued (and continues to this day) to have a policy that subsidizes
farmers’ income by artificially increasing the price of commodities through, among
other things, paying farmers to let some crops rot so their market value rises.
According to the Environmental Working Group’s “Farm Subsidy Database”, 73% of
all farm subsidies in 2006 were collected by 10% of the agricultural businesses that
received them (Environmental Working Group, 2007).
Back in 1947 the U.S. and the government of Mexico signed an agreement that
exempted any Mexican citizen deported from the United States from subsequent
deportation if he/she received a contract for work by a U.S. business after the initial
deportation. As part of the larger bracero program, this was of great benefit to farm
businesses that depended on migrant labor to keep their costs down and their
profits up. It meant they could call for deportation of their workers, then hire them
back, and never have to worry about them being deported again. “Plane Wreck at
Los Gatos (Deportee)” tells the tale of one planeload of migrants whose plane
crashed south of today's Silicon Valley as they were being deported back to Mexico.
The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps
You're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"
My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?
Words by Woody Guthrie. TRO. Copyright 1961 (Renewed) 1963 (Renewed) Ludlow
Music, Inc., New York, NY. Used by Permission.
Interestingly, in 2001, Mexico’s President Vincente Fox and George W. Bush were
negotiating a similar agreement to the one of 1947 before it was waylaid by the
events of September 11 and the subsequent “liberation” of Afghanistan and then
Iraq. The so-called “temporary worker visa” program—which has recently gained
momentum once again—would allow migrant workers to maintain their visa from
job to job. Agricultural businesses would then be able to keep workers employed, by
shifting them from employer to employer (read crop to crop), and preserve the
minimal labor-related obligations they are held to.
Conclusions
The last three songs I included above clearly evidence a personal connection for me
in my life in this far corner of California. With Latino people being the fastest
growing ethnic group in the county—many of whom are employed in migrant work,
such as Sun Valley Floral Farms (where they are subjected to the effects of
herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides)—and with Native Americans being the
largest “minority” population in the county—the Hoopa Valley tribe’s reservation is
the largest in California and the Yurok tribe has more enrolled members than any
other California tribe—I come across the contexts Woody noted literally every day.
The high incidence of child abuse and neglect, problems with alcohol and other
drugs, domestic violence; the polarization between those who made/make a living
in the woods and those who want to eliminate timber as an industry; the struggle to
preserve water in the face of powerful agricultural lobbies; I experience all of this as
a member of my community and as a social worker by profession. I think this is
what an ecological metaphor is all about: nothing that happens is ever too distant
from one’s own lived experience to relegate it into unimportance. Said positively:
though it may take an order of magnitude or two, we are all interconnected.
This is our country here as far as you can see no matter which
way you walk or
No matter what spot of it you stand on
And when you have crossed her as many times as I have you will
see as many ugly things about her as pretty things
You will hear whole gangs of travelers and settlers arguing
about her.
What she is, how she come to be, what you are supposed to do here.
and you will hear some argue at you
That she is so beautiful you are supposed to spend your life just
feeling her pretty parts,
Sucking in her sweetest breezes and tasting her fairest odors,
looking at her brightest colored scenes,
And I would say that gang has the wrong notion.
And there are some bunches that tell you she is all ugly and all
dirty, that there is nothing good about her, nothing free, nothing
clean, that she is all slums, shacks, rot, filth, stink, and bad
odors, loud words of bitter flavors,
Well, this herd is big and I heard them often and I heard them loud,
but I come to think that they too was just as wrong as the first
outfit,
Because I seen the pretty and I seen the ugly and it was because I
knew the pretty part that I wanted to change the ugly part,
Because I hated the dirty part that I knew how to feel the love
for the cleaner part,
I looked in a million of her faces and eyes, and I told myself there
was a look on that face that was good, if I could see it there,
in back of all of the shades and shadows of fear and doubt and
ignorance and tangles of debts and worries,
And I guess it is these things that make our country look all lopsided
to some of us, lopped over onto the good and easy side or over
onto the bad and the hard side,
I know that the people that run our desks and offices got so full
of the desire to grab enough money to run away and hide on, that
they let this thought run them, instead of the bigger plan,
well, this has always been a hard word to say, but
It could very truly be that our office people are doing the best they
know how to do,
But we had ought to teach ourselves better and higher than this
before we run ourselves and put ourselves into our offices.
--This Is Our Country Here (Guthrie, 2001)
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