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“They’ll be sorry,” Tony said “Those jobs are a pipe dream Gotta be Millions are out of work Let’s say you do run off to Portland or Seattle and there ain’t work Then where will you be—in a strange place with no land and no job”

Elsa held Ant’s hand Together they climbed the steps up to the schoolhouse Inside, the children’s desks had been pushed out of the way, positioned along the walls Plywood covered several of the broken s So a portable movie screen

“Oh, boy,” Ant called out “A movie!”

Tony led the family to a row in the back, where they sat with the other Italians ere left in town

A fewhed constantly, a reed the land this fall

The door banged shut and the lights went out

There was a whir and clatter of sound; a black-and-white i windstorh a farm Tumbleweeds cartwheeled past a boarded-up house

The caption read: 30 of all the farmers on the Great Plains face foreclosure

The next iray-unifor babies and old people Dust pneumonia takes a terrible toll

In the next ie, farmers poured milk into the streets, where it disappeared instantly in the arid dirt

Milk sells for below production costs …

Haggard, raggedghostlike A Hooverville enca in cardboard boxes or broken-down cars or shacks cobbled together fro in soup lines …

The hts came back on

Elsa heard footsteps, boot heels clacking confidently on the hardwood floor Like everyone else, Elsa turned

Here was a man with presence, dressed better than anyone in town He moved the makeshift movie screen out of the way, stepped over to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, wrote Far methods, and underlined the words