Why the Bibs and Bow Tie?

It’s a question I get asked pretty darned often. Sure, some people might simply see it as a costume. And I know I’m kind of the farm mascot. And I’m okay with that. But there’s a lot more to it.

In high school I hadn’t read a lot of books, but one that I had read was John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. That book really resonated with me. It’s about a family that lost their farm during the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. They lost absolutely everything. So, to make a living, they packed up whatever scarce belongings they could carry on their dilapidated old truck and headed west to California following the promise that they’d find work picking fruit.

But the promises turned out to be lies. Work was scarce, conditions in the migrant camps were miserable, and the pay was so low that the family could barely afford to buy enough food to survive on. It was a humiliating and degrading existence.

There’s a scene in the book where the camp has a square dance. And, even though they’re poor and their clothes are threadbare and worn, the ladies spend the morning washing and drying them in the sun. They scrub all of the children, too, and tie ribbons in their hair. And when the men return from work, they put on freshly washed overalls and clean shirts. The few who had them wore tattered bow ties, and everyone arrived at the dance with all the dignity they could muster, their heads held high.

In the 1980s, we also lost our family farm. Ours was done in when a hailstorm destroyed all of our crops. We were forced to auction off everything our farm, our equipment, even our house. We had a neighbor who kindly let us grow what we could on a piece of his land, and we started over traveling to farmer’s markets and selling whatever we could grow.

I own 18 pairs of overalls and 18 pressed white shirts. I wear clean ones every single day to always keep our family’s spirit of resilience and determination at the forefront of my mind. Because, no matter how bad things got, we never accepted defeat.

In a way, coming to work every day is my way of showing up at the square dance.