The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [260]
CHAPTER 2
1 stinko: U.S. slang meaning intoxicated with alcohol.
2 *McAlester: Location of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, which opened in 1908.
CHAPTER 4
1 Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby: Popular song written in 1925 by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn.
2 Jehovites: Jehovahs Witnesses, members of a United States millenialist, Bible-based religious sect that started in the late nineteenth century (their name was adopted in 1931), and has spread world wide.
3 feeny bush: Probably a corruption of seeny bush, or senna, a shrub of the genus Sennia.
4 fatted calf . . . in Scripture: From Luke 15: 11-32.
CHAPTER 5
1 Spam: Ubiquitous canned, chopped, and formed pork product first marketed in 1937 by George A. Hormel Company of Austin, Minnesota.
CHAPTER 6
1 *Rosasharn: Rose of Sharon, the oldest Joad daughter, whose name comes from Song of Songs, 2: 1: “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” Rose-of-Sharon is a tall flowering shrub of the Hibiscus family, native to the American East and Midwest and into Texas. Its flowers generally are pink.
CHAPTER 7
1 *Hymie: Steinbeck noted on the galleys to his editor, “Probably a corruption of high sign but its good.”
CHAPTER 8
1 Hudson Super-Six: From 1916 through the 1920s, the Super Six was the popular, staple model of The Hudson Motor Car Company, founded in 1909 in Detroit.
2 loose Mother Hubbard: Comfortable, plain house dress which usually fitted only through the shoulders. It was named for the nursery rhyme character, Mother Hubbard.
3 *Purty Boy Floyd: Notorious outlaw Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd was born in 1901 in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and though eventually labeled Public Enemy Number 1, came to be considered the last social bandit in America, comparable to Robin Hood or Billy the Kid, whom he idolized. He died in a cornfield shootout with law enforcment agents near East Liverpool, Ohio, in October 1934.
CHAPTER 9
1 *guayule: Parthenium argentatum, a desert shrub containing rubber, native to the north central plateau of Mexico and the Big Bend area of Texas. In the 1930s and early 1940s large scale production of rubber was thought to be possible by harvesting this plant.
2 *Pilgrim’s Progress: British author John Bunyan’s two part allegory of the Christian soul’s journey to heaven, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come (1678-1684).
3 St. Louis Fair: St. Louis, Missouri, was the site of the Worlds Fair (sometimes called the Universal Exposition) of 1904, a celebration to commemorate a century of American sovereignty west of the Mississippi River.
CHAPTER 10
1 *The Winning of Barbara Worth: Popular western romance novel published in 1911 by Harold Bell Wright.
2 Dr. Miles’ Almanac: Dr. Miles New Weather Almanac and Hand Book of Valuable Information, annual soft cover booklet published by Dr. Miles Medical Company (later Miles Laboratories) in Elkhart, Indiana.
3 *snipes: Discarded stubs of cigars or cigarettes.
4 hoyden: Boisterous girl, a tomboy.
5 stereopticon: Optical projection instrument first made popular in mid-nineteenth century, that used a magic lantern to throw on a screen a magnified image from a slide, photograph, or other object. By combining two or three magic lanterns, which focused in the same area of light on a screen or wall, a viewer could see dissolving views or combinations of images.
CHAPTER 12
1 Highway 66: Officially endorsed in November 1926, as part of the National Highway System, U.S. Highway 66 ran 2,200 miles (much of it paved) from Chicago, Illinois, southwesterly through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and on through California to Santa Monica.
CHAPTER 13
1 *An’ Lot . . . my Lord: From Genesis 19: 18: “And Lot said to them, Oh, no, my lords; behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me, and I die.”
2 Blessed . . . covered: From Psalms 32: 1: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”
3 *All that lives is holy: Eighteenth-century British poet William Blake