Mention Route 66 and people think of Grapes of Wrath--usually the movie version by John Ford. Lean cattle grazing the Texas plains, Henry Fonda scratching his head and looking west, dust devils playing in the wind--these are the images most Americans carry of Route 66 during the 1930's. They are a tribute to the power of art to condition the way we remember history.

Many don’t realize that Grapes of Wrath had its origin in seven newspaper articles on migrant farm workers in California. John Steinbeck wrote for the San Francisco News in 1936, three years before his novel. Steinbeck toured the squatter’s camps and Hoovervilles of California. The strong, independent farmers he found there–now beaten down, sick, sullen–inspired him to travel to the source of their troubles, dusty, rolling Oklahoma. 66 Steinbeck made a road a major character in an American drama, and Tom Joad and his family represented Okies and Arkies to America. With Woody Guthrie, Steinbeck knew "You can’t feel anything for a million people...you have to feel for a single family."

Grapes of Wrath is as much a presence on Route 66 as Bobby Troup’s song--more, since Troup’s song skips Kansas and most of New Mexico. Grapes of Wrath has laid a groove in our literary imagination along Route 66, which writers like Jack Kerouac and Paul Horgan followed.