Whitney Weddell and Tracy Weddell

00:01 I'm Whitney Weddell. I'm 55 years old. It's Thursday, March 12th, 2020. We're in Bakersfield California. I'm sitting here with my sister Tracy Weddell.

00:14 My name is Tracy Weddell. I'm 60 years old. Today's date is Thursday, March 12th, 2020 in Bakersfield, California, and I'm here with my sister Whitney Weddell.

00:28 Well, we've come here today to talk about her mother Doris Weddell and she is the Undisputed dustbowl Queen. The number of all things stuff full most Lee the story about what happened to the Dust Bowl immigrants when they arrived here in the Central Valley and she is so famous for that that people will often asked was she a dust bowl Refugee herself. Did she come across as a child of the Dust Bowl at the shore Family Heritage because she was so passionate about it. She spent the whole last bit of her life completely focused on that issue and she wasn't the dustbowl child or involved in the dust bowl at all really except for that. She was a child in the Central Valley when the Dust Bowl refugees arrived.

01:15 And she remembers them showing up in her neighborhoods and then her school she remembered house in they were that they were filthy, but they were hungry that they weren't normal children. These were not normal people and they were in a disparaged and called Okies and all sorts of unsavory words and thought of a sort of substandard animal like people

01:37 And she remembers him coming to the door and knocking on the door saying I work for a sandwich and

01:43 Her family and other neighbors would employ them to do various tasks and then give them food and they would ask to use the bathroom and then they would say no we can't have those filthy people in our house. God knows what they'll bring him with salmon and then get very upset when they are using the bathroom in the yard and take a seat animals their animals these people that don't even know how to you know, contain themselves. And if she remembers even at the time as a child thinking what do you expect we expect these are and what would you do in this situation that she was a little bit to him above her?

02:17 Her station in that way. She was just cuz she could see things that a lot of people couldn't see in her family and in her her community. She did say that her mother never turn down somebody for that anytime. Somebody came to the back door hungry whether or not there was work for them to do. She always gave me a sandwich.

02:39 Now

02:41 Well, so then she lives her life and doesn't think very much of the Dust Bowl. I don't remember ever speaking of it or having any interest in it really until later when she found herself in the world after her divorce from her father and she tested she was very proud of the fact that when she took the civil service test. She had the highest score you gave her lots of options of places that she might go to work in the county and then she opted to go to work at the library in Lamont as sort of a library tech only this is sort of an underfunded system. So she was for all intents and purposes the librarian in Lemont, even though she didn't have that sort of

03:22 Credentialing but Lamont is a really small town just outside of Bakersfield and I'm not hardly anybody has ever heard of it there. A lot of small towns like that around Bakersfield Lamont Arvin shafter-wasco places where during the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s people landed because this is an agricultural area people came here and they could pick grapes or they could pick oranges or the variety of crops that were being grown here at the time. And so she goes to work out in Lemont at this little sort of rinky-dink library and our mother is also well known for cleaning things. She's very well organized in everything is always not cluttered very much. Everything is put where it belongs. So when she gets to this Library, there's this mess in this closet and so course being our mother she sets about cleaning up this closeted it first. She's just going to throw it all away, but she discovers that she's going through at this is all historically important stuff for the local.

04:22 It includes newspaper clippings and and various articles and things and she starts put them in folders and and soon she has this file cabinet that is really all local dustbowl history people who have somebody collected all this material.

04:39 About what happened to the Dust Bowl hours when they arrived in the Lamont in Arvin region, and so she becomes kind of interested in this this is kind of a topic that suddenly passed think she remembers her childhood. And what's with happens when when the dust bowl or showed up in their neighborhood so she becomes more interested in and she starts talking to her clients the people at the library about their experiences and they come in for books. These Pentecostal women would come in every day for books. They came in for romance books or to sort of hilarious older women and they would talk to her and start telling her stories and she's showing them things she found in the stuff ballroom and they start saying oh, yes, that was my cousin. Oh, yes, look at this picture and pretty soon. They're starting to identify people in school pictures and things like then they start bringing in the sheaves. So fascinated that they they bring in their own stories to her and they're showing her there school pictures and their

05:39 They bring an artifacts, you know cotton picking devices and just all the kinds of things that they remember from being children when they when the dust bowl was

05:50 What's happening and they are there so fascinating to her that they just bringing more and more people and pretty soon. She starts to become a repository for their stories and she starts recording their stories. She starts collecting their artifacts in this room grows and grows and don't even fit in the silk closet anymore and she starts to become a little famous for this because she knows these people and they start to ask her to be a speaker at various colleges and they ask her if she knows the kids are coming from all over the place to do Dust Bowl history Day projects and what makes her it's sort of the gold standard of a reference is that she's got the she's got the First Source, you know, she's got the original people that she can put other people in touch with and

06:37 That's really where she starts to become pretty famous then and then somewhere in the early 1980s. She discovered if you watch the movie The Grapes of Wrath from the 1930s with Henry Fonda in one of the scenes the family the Joad family is pulling into the camp and there are buildings in that movie that you can see that in the 1980s were still standing from the 1930s and they were rotting and not inhabitable at all and the county made some announcement about they were preparing to knock them down. And my mother is in Lamont in just the right place at the right time and she determines that there's no way in hell they're going to knock down those buildings and somehow she and whoever else will jump on board. They're going to save these original buildings from the Dust Bowl migration from that movie. And so she says about making connections to the local Chamber of Commerce to the local Women's Club. Obviously the library system other anybody who'll listen she'll bring them on board.

07:37 And so that became a big passion for her life's work. We're going to save those buildings were going to repair them fix them up and they're going to become a museum to to memorialize Really the travels and tribulations of all these people who came from the Dust Bowl so that began sometime in the early 1980s. I don't remember exactly when she didn't really announced it. It just sort of became her passion. So then she spends all of her time working today do fundraisers in a devel. They started having a big dustbowl Festival the only Festival of its kind anybody knows about on the west coast. And so all these old us about dollars would would gather once a year in Lamont and and play old-timey music and and have old timey cars and she began to present this collection that not only now was the library's material but we're Tyrael. She was personally collecting and created all kinds of posters and and sheaths with old articles.

08:37 Things and this this day this dustbowl Festival grew and grew and grew and every year since then they have had one even after her death that continued because they needed to raise the money in order to save the buildings.

08:53 And in the meantime while she's saving buildings people are calling her from all over the world. Apparently if you call the Library of Congress and ask for information on the Dust Bowl your first reference will be Doris Weddell and people would call her speaking all different kinds of languages people from Japanese TV Norwegian TV Huell Howser Peter Jennings. Jim Carrey was about to do a movie called Children of the Dust Bowl but you never actually did be sent out a whole crew of people to her house to get information and Ken Burns was in contact with her to do his a documentary. She's in his credits. She's in the credits of a lot of different books and movies all because of this.

09:37 Repository of information which really mostly was the people themselves. She she was like the conduit for all these people to tell their story. Remember when he will Houser came out to the camp and the end she just put out at the library like a everybody who house is going to be here. He's going to do a whole thing on the camp. So he wants to interview a couple people. So if you just interested in tell your story just come on out and there were probably a hundred people there to be interviewed and when he got there, he was such a he was such a good man. He came out and he saw all these people in the heat of the day all these old people in the heat of the day standing in line to tell their story about what it was like for them as a child in the dust bowl and I'm here if he sent his crew out for cases of water and they all came back with cases of of ice cold water and he interviewed every single one of them like they were the most important person on Earth even though of course, he's only going to show one or two. You probably could have done in about 15 minutes. He spent the day.

10:37 Interviewing all those people and she was so impressed by him. And so so sweet that all those people got to be taken seriously for a minute and given their their time and it was hard because you know, their whole life history has been one of degradation and shame and still send and something that you were, you know, Doki was a lowlife thing and yet somehow now because of her and because of her collection and because of her veneration of that history, you know, their stories were were valuable and Priceless people want to hear them in people coming from TV to ask them about them.

11:12 Huell Howser's putting the story on television suddenly kicked up a lot of local interest among people who had previously kind of poo poo the whole thing and there started to be interested in fundraising and and what do we need this money for and so, you know that she continued to get support for the the dustbowl festival and I can remember, you know, we call her up and you know, hey Mom, how you doing? And then she be late though, you know Norwegian television with you today. Really Mom, you know, what like, you know that we've can you imagine that these people would be coming to you know to Bakersfield to see me and is she never really Amisha understood that she was this expert and she knew this stuff and she had these connections, but she never wore it she didn't she wasn't she didn't think she was some kind of celebrity. She just want to be helpful of people who needed this information.

12:12 Just no no that's Jones. I said Mom they're making movies. They're making money and you should charge for your expertise know I couldn't do you know, she was a librarian. She was a librarian to make a donation to the building so well and it is terrific that you know, by the time she was Ill in the air later 29th, 2009-2010 the county decided that they weren't going to knock the buildings down long ago and by 2009-2010. They had moved them into an area where they were right near each other and they had started painting them and refurbishing them and and when she passed we know we held her funeral just outside where those buildings were and they housing Museum now and it's so fascinating to think about, you know back in 1978 when she was a single mom just looking for

13:12 You know that that she could go from you know, just wanting to be able to do something meaningful with her work and and she grabbed onto this projects and and it was her life's work that we're going to save those buildings and end Alexis history and she did you know, she absolutely did when she passed in 2011. Those buildings were coming alive has a museum and and her work continues to this day and as much as I really miss her and boy howdy, I really miss her.

13:45 I work in Lamont now and then so I drive kids their kids who live in the camp when I take him home from a field trip. I'm right there and it's you know, she still there. She's still very much a part of that history and they're still benefiting from the work that she did and so for me, she's she's not just she's not gone. She's not gone. She still making a difference in the lives of all those people.

14:18 Another using the camp for in this offseason when there's no migrants there for homeless women and I think she would love that. I think she would know what I think she loved about that camp wasn't just that it was a camp but that it it was the best Camp Sunset labor camp. It was the best Camp day.

14:38 They didn't just how is people like so many other places. They had a community in the community had resources and they had services and they had a standard of living and running water it running water flush toilet. Everybody had jobs said it was a really well-run place where people can be treated like human beings again. And what's so cool about it. Now, is that the homeless women that are there? It's not just housing them either. It's meant to give them Services training hook them up with jobs find them permanent shelter so that they're not

15:11 Animals anymore. We can hopefully start doing away with some of these stigmas about the way we look upon poor people and that started when she was just a little girl and who knew that she was still carrying that with her when she arrived at this little Dusty Lamont Library out in the middle of nowhere and that she would create a phenomena that that is internationally recognized. I mean, that's just wow.

15:43 Can you?

15:47 Talk about like what in 4k multi-part questions, like what influence your mom has had on you and maybe some specific moment that you can think of and also and also like any sense as to why me sort of touched upon it but why this was so important to her even despite her having really no connection to it and maybe looking back further in her life. What kind of Drew her to this?

16:19 I have no doubt that when she walked into that library and there was this room and is more of a closet and it's just a mess and her initial thought was cleaning closet cuz she wouldn't have tolerated clutter at all. He said he'll put an order filed and so and having worked in library to its it first you just kind of parceling through things better after a while something catches your eye and you reading it and then something else is catching Ryan you're reading it. And so I'm sure that she began to say I need to save this. This is this is the local history of lamondre of Arvin which is nearby and it's all tied to that camp over there the sunset labor camp, which she was a big sign back fan, even before she became a librarian and so the idea that these these three buildings were featured in in that book and and in that film and that even just that

17:19 Hollywood history was going to be destroyed but that it was not just Hollywood. It was real people's lives and she had been touched by that as child. And so I have no doubt that it just sparked something in her. This is interesting. These people are interesting and because these women were just naturally coming into her library and so these are older women Pentecostal and mostly all they do is read and so librarian and readers. I mean, she strikes up friendships at conversations, and I'm sure that they just stoked each others interested. I'm sure somebody came in and said, hey, let me show you this and she's like, oh, I'm sure it first you just going to be polite but then it was a call. Hey, like that's wow and because she was interested in in people's lives and you know, she came from what you might call upper-middle-class and and you know, her parents raised her with sort of some of these

18:19 Biases and thanks and but she would never have treated anybody as if they were less than or anything other than somebody she wanted to engage with and so I'm quite sure that she was looking to to just save what was important. I'm sure she didn't sit there and say hey I can make a career out of this money will just make this file cabinets. And then okay there was too much stuff for the file cabinet. So they used the whole closets and it became known as the dust full room it even had to sign and some of the folks at the Kern County Library the time we're not all that impressed and then she would say, you know, I want to put more resources into that and she was getting some pushback from the library folks until he will Houser showed up and then he was famous and then everybody wanted to do them to the criticism was a

19:13 Was that the library wasn't getting enough credit for the work she was doing she's like I'm doing this this white you yeah, I hate to say it. But and she's bringing it all back home. I mean a lot of this stuff that belongs to the library belongs to the library, but you know, we have a bedroom that turns into dust bowl depository of everything and at one point she was hung up on Dorothea Lange who was the famous of you be a photographer of the time and somebody and you remember who somebody brought to her when she passed away when Dorothea Lange passed away she will to my mother the camera that she took all those famous pictures with all those migrant the Margaret women in the migrant children that she took when she went out to the camps back in the get many famous pictures of Dorothy Lane with her camera and my mother had that camera and protected it. I mean it we have Priceless and someone our mother passed away. We had it and didn't know what to do with it.

20:13 I'm too precious a thing of putting one's living room a lot. A lot of the help that came for the camp because the property is owned by the Kern County Housing Authority because it's still running Camp. They still House people. So mother had stated on more than one occasion that when she went to all of the stuff should go to the Housing Authority so it could go into the museum and be continued to be preserved and she was just trusting that they would be somebody who would do that. And so when she passed the folks at their Housing Authority contacted me and said, you know, what would you like us to pick up and she had a storage unit that was packed full at the time so they had to take away two truck loads of stuff and and I had the camera at the time and I was storing it at home as securely as possible and I was tore night. I didn't want to give him the camera, you know, and they didn't ask for it. They didn't say. Hey we need this camera, but I thought I'm not going to do anything with it. It's going to sit in a car.

21:13 Wait till I die and that doesn't make sense and the camp was coming together and it was becoming this Museum. And so when they picked up the last load I gave him the camera and it is it is at the camp. It is the main hall. There was the recreation hall for the camp. And so that's what is been turned primarily into the museum building and the camera is feature there. Although I assume they lock it up when they're not accessing it. The museum is like open daily for tours or anything you have to make arrangements to go and see this every year at the dustbowl festival. They open it up for the public and everybody they they have bus tours that take you to the camp to to see it, but she it was hard partying with camera.

22:00 Because it was Dorothea Lange and it was Mother.

22:12 Did she start doing all this later and then she was divorced when she was 44 and she spent a couple years in retail cuz she had to have a job as a single mom and she got the job at the Kern County Library sometime in the late 70s early 80s.

22:27 So yeah, just starting it and she never really held a job before she been a you know housewife mother and this Library job was just perfect fit part of my question of just that you know, because not everybody would do this kind of thing. What do you think?

22:46 Seeing her doing that has instilled in you as adults now and especially now that she's gone and maybe things that you continue to process and doing your own lives.

22:57 I'm certainly I think you're like her and I was thinking about this. I think you're like her in a lot of ways in the sense that you're both sort of academic in nature really smart and really interested in details and how connections are made and I'm sure that if she had been in a little library and some other kind of community with some other kind of History attached to it. That would have been the same if she been up in the Appalachians. She'd collected Appalachian music and and all their stories in or if she'd been anywhere else. She wouldn't have found that story. She would have found another one and it would have been just as enticing to her and just as interesting to her and and you're that same way. I mean, you're an academic person you like to you will look through a book and see a little something and look it up and make a file and add some more to it and you know, you got into the genealogy where one thing leads to another and half the time I'm going to I don't know why you're caring about that, but I don't know why you do what you do.

23:57 And I used to ask you the same thing mom. Why are you so enthralled with this? I mean this is kind of an odd group of people to be so passionate about their history to say, it's not just their history is all our history is the human history. It's the biggest migration in this country ever and it's it doesn't get its do you know when it's so fascinating and I think that was really the thing more than anything is she was fascinated every little story every little Nuance there would be a school photo from whatever Year from the sunset school and then be a group of 20 kids and it all, you know kind of children and she answered me to call Dad my brother Bill. Yeah. I knew that my brother Bill, but now who's that little boy next door neighbor's name? What was his last name? How can we find out any living relatives? I'll go find out if she can then she could get to the bottom of who that little boy is until she found.

24:57 Pulling information in and collecting a story.

25:01 And she was determined that it wouldn't be lost that these people were getting older and of course many of the actual dust Bowlers have long since passed. But while she was at that Library, they were just older folks. She was just determines that they not pass into history as a known like you it's when we talked about the Dust Bowl migration, Indiana Ken Burns documentary. He spends an awful lot of time talking about you how they started out in Oklahoma, Arkansas Texas or wherever and then you only moved across the Mother Road and then ultimately landed in California the end and he doesn't go into any detail really about what happened to him when they got here there's not as much of that Steinbeck story about how they organized and how they were treated and what their lives were like how they change California by their presence here and they brought a type of religion that was unknown here and it is change, California.

26:01 Absolutely, absolutely, and she was determined that that story not be lost.

26:08 And you are like to think that we take a lot of mother with all of us and then we are all clearly the four of us are Mothers Daughters and part of that comes from how you treat people and and starting from when she was a child and observing how people were treating these dust Bowlers these Okies which at the time was a dirty word. She was determined that we not treat people badly and and Not only would we know our manners but that we wouldn't we wouldn't engage in that we wouldn't we wouldn't do the bullying thing. We wouldn't do the rude thing. And so in that sense and we all carry that seed from her to be better people and end to to be better stewards of of other people when necessary and to reach out and that compassion. I don't know if you can teach compassion, but

27:00 We have that he came from her and she was determined that we would always be that kind of that kind of and it was a thing of its like you can feel the Compassion or you can just have good manners and display the compassion but you may not display rudeness right anger disrespect on anyone ever regardless of how you feel. I mean to a fault to fault I got in trouble once because she took me wants to a doctor. I don't remember what for and and apparently he was asking me what I was doing or feeling or having or whatever and and I apparently explained in some detail about that and when we left she chewed me out in the car all the way home. How dare I speak to him like that, but apparently I didn't State my concerns in a way that was acceptable and I learned from that experience will have a different conversation with the doctor next time.

27:57 One time I had a friend come over who has a child. Mom didn't like his friend at all and this friend had shown up to see if I was home, but I was not and she mom invited her in an offer to cake Opera dirty had a lovely conversation let her use the phone and off she went and she gave me a call later today. I went to your house and all you should have gone to my house. You know, you shouldn't have gone there. My mom doesn't like you and you're not going to be at my house. And she says your mom loves me. She was so nice to me. I said, of course she was you knocked on her door, but she invited me in of course she did but she was so nice. Absolutely that does not mean that she liked it just means she treating you with respect. She always said if you're in a room with somebody that you absolutely can't stand they should be the last person to know it.

28:48 And while on the one hand that seems a little bit once we're done looking for like you're putting on a face or or pretending or or even lying for her that meant that mean that's that's classy Behavior. That's how you treat people and more about you than about them. Exactly. And so it doesn't a sermon you got to become their best friend, but you don't you're not in a room with people giving anybody the evil eye or are acting like they're not up to your standards. Even if they're not.

29:18 That was her well, and she went when she died. We had the attend Commandments of Doris and she always said you should leave a room better than when you found it and when you leave the world, it should be a better place and she certainly did that ended.