I was listening to the radio the other day; a Vince Gill song came on and a couple lines got me thinking.
Oh my mama tried to warn me he's done time in California
But he'll be an Okie til his dyin' day
There's some kind of Oklahoma-California connection that goes back a long time that I don't fully understand.
My grandparents moved to CA for work in the 50's then back to OK in the 60's. I've heard many other examples of OK to CA moves and CA to OK moves.
What is the connection?
The dust bowl days in Ok forced Oklahomans to move west, finally settling in Ca.
They were treated like trailer trash, no better than foreign migrant workers that came from south of the border. Signs put on roads to keep out.
The slur word to describe those from Ok was okies. A term we embrace now.
Way too much more info to post in this thread from my phone. It would be to your advantage to research the dust bowl days and why they left, then finally returned.
The shelter belts of trees in NW Ok that still exist are a direct result of those dust bowl days.