The plan was that we would paint mailboxes for 25¢ a box, and four, maybe five boxes a good day would get us all the way from Maine to California where good jobs were supposed to be plentiful. When we got to Oklahoma, the plan fell apart because those folks who had remained behind and hadn’t left for California themselves didn’t much care how their mailboxes looked anymore.  

My father and uncle and I eventually did get to California but only after having several brushes with John law for vagrancy and panhandling, etc. Once in California, desperate and completely out of money, we found temporary food and shelter (platform tent) at a government-run relief camp in Indio, California, while we waited for the cotton fields to start picking to the north. It was in that relief camp that I learned and fell in love for life with the nutritional value of peanut butter!

In one of the fields we picked, we met and became friendly with a man named “John.” John didn’t pick cotton every day: John was a writer; some days John just worked on the book he was writing. One day, more than seventy years ago, John extended a simple act of kindness to me I've never forgotten, so I remember him indelibly. Twenty years later I learned by a  chance encounter that John’s full name was John Steinbeck, explaining how my family name, TOBIN, got to be mentioned in the final pages of The Grapes of Wrath.

But more than telling of how two men and a boy all the way from Maine met and became friendly with a guy named "John" in a California cotton field who turned out to be John Steinbeck, and got their family name in that great American opus The Grapes of Wrath as a result, this is a first-person survival story that speaks to the ingenuity and staying-power in the face of bitter adversity that makes America great, a slice-of-life Americana for all time, Great Depression be damned! It is an inspirational story that has been vetted and broadcast twice nationally to critical acclaim, a story that brings, in a 30-minute radio-interview format, a stinging and meaningful uplifting message that all should hear and will never forget once heard!

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P.H.G. in Mississippi wrote:

"WOW! Your telling of being on the road back in the depression and picking cotton with John Steinbeck was so powerful and inspiring! And the incident with the can of beef gravy!! Thank you for sharing!"

J.C.O. in Washington State wrote:

"Spellbinding and inspirational! A story for all time!"

A.C. in Texas commented:

"A fascinating story! It must be satisfying to be part of literary history in such a way."

K.C. in Maine wrote:

"I used your CD in some of my classes. What an inspiration it was. First-hand experiences like yours are so important for students to hear. Thank you for sharing."

The Rev. M. Mc. in New Hampshire wrote:

"Your story is testimony to the dimensions of the human spirit and to the potential of us all to progressively recreate ourselves throughout our lives."