What is Reddit's opinion of Solid Ice and Other Stories from the Heartland: The storytelling techniques of an American artist?

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The Great Depression of the 1930s, combined with weather extremes in the decade and the prevalence of large families, inspired tens of thousands of Iowans to emigrate to Southern California with its promise of good jobs and a great climate. The Iowan ex-pats famously gathered annually for the Iowa Picnic, an event that frequently gathered more than one hundred thousand from the state.

This equally inspired annual – or near annual treks – from LA back to Iowa to visit family, keeping ties and an Iowan identification strong. Emigration to California on the part of those from poorer states, including those from Oklahoma (who became known as Okies) and Arkansas (who became known as Arkies), where economically disadvantaged, making trips back to their homes difficult if not impossible and not allowing for a life more centered on LA: the poorer groups tended to become itinerant farm labor (consider The Grapes of Wraith), scattered in farms throughout the central valley, removed from the LA population center, making these groups less visible to people in LA. Disparaging nicknames decreased the inspiration for self-identification of these poorer groups.

Iowans tended to be more affluent and better educated, and they were able to secure better employment and a higher standard of living. They found reason to self-identify and gather whenever they could: self-identification in the new environment could be beneficial economically as fellow Iowans sought to promote one another.

An anecdotal observation – keeping in mind that single pieces of evidence are isolated reference points and must always be kept in perspective: my wife’s family emigrated from central Iowa to LA in early 1941 because of the promise of defense-related jobs, which were becoming more numerous at the time. The father of the family was the youngest of six children raised on a farm, but because he was the youngest, he could not hope for a life in agriculture. After graduating from highs school in 1935, he drove truck from Iowa to Chicago, but LA promised better pay and better weather. After relocating in LA, he and his family made return visits to Iowa whenever they could, and these were often annual. They also attended the annual Iowa picnic, establishing lifelong friendships among Iowans who they did not know in their home state, but only met by means of the picnic. My wife was born in the LA area, but I have always maintained that this was merely the most eastern of the Iowan counties: culturally, she and her family are more Iowan than western.

Because of her devotion to Iowa (even though she was born in beautiful downtown Burbank), she maintained the tradition of visits to Iowa, even after we married, and I came to see the magic of those annual events. Upon retirement, we found the opportunity to return to the farmhouse, established in 1875, so we are now ex-pat westerners, now living in Iowa. The ties between Iowa and the West – or in the case of my wife’s family between Iowa and LA – remained sufficiently strong over seven decades to inspire a reversal of the emigration!