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Fortunes and Misfortune. This does not mean that all white Oklahomans enjoy the good life. The small farmer's existence is marginal; many must hold other jobs to feed their families. Near Balko, where his grandfather settled in 1907, Travis Boston, 39, figures that he may be the last of his family to cling to farming. He owns 320 acres and leases an equal amount of land to raise wheat and graze his 40 head of cattle, but he has to operate a Phillips 66 gas station as well. He needs more acreage if he is to make farming profitable, but claims that the banks will not lend him any money, while "doctors and lawyers buy the land at inflated prices for tax write-offs."
Some of Oklahoma's present fortunes were made off the misfortune of earlier Okies. In the Dust Bowl days, recalls Rancher Ross Labrier, "the small ranchers who had about 160 acres fled first.
Those who didn't leave joined the WPA. We bought the repossessed lands from the bank." Near Kenton, Labrier bought up land at $15 an acre. He now owns 23,000 acres valued at $2,300,000 and has 400 cattle.
Aquatic Paradise. The key to the Dust Bowl's transformation is the recent availability and control of water. It was always there, but it either lay inaccessible 500 feet below the surface, or turned to torrents in destructive floods. The answer to both problems was dams. Senator Mike Monroney championed the ranchers in the western part of the state who wanted small reservoirs for their dry-land irrigation. Until his death in 1963, Senator Robert S. Kerr lobbied for large flood-control dams in the river-ravaged east. As Monroney recently explained it: "We incorporated the little-dam program into the big-dam program to create the best damn program in the Senate."
Mainly through Kerr's Washington influence, the eastern part of the state has been transformed from dusty scrub land into an aquatic paradise. Its 679 square miles of water make its ratio of water to land higher than Minnesota's. The Oologah, Pensacola and Eufaula reservoirs are immense. Keystone, Heyburn, Thunderbird, Hulah—the lakes multiply as fast as Senate bills. Atoka, Fort Gibson, Markham Ferry, Tenkiller Ferry, Wister; the new recreational waters created by dams abound with boats, water-skiers and fishermen. They also mean more tourists and more money.
There is still more water to come. Kerr's last big project—linking the Arkansas, Verdigris and Mississippi rivers with the Gulf of Mexico by means of 17 locks and 27 reservoirs—will make Tulsa a seaport. Covering 450 miles and costing $1.3 billion, the project is the largest ever undertaken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is expected to add 36,000 jobs to the Tulsa area, help the city on its way to becoming one of the most attractive in the Southwest, and sharply increase land values. The port of Catoosa (pop. 906), 750 river miles inland, already enjoys a parade of new mercantile buildings along U.S. 66, the route over which the Goad family (changed to Joad by Steinbeck in his book) made its westward flight.