Handsomer Than Henry Fonda

 

Joan Jobe Smith

 

 

Separated from my father who'd gone off to war

my mother left Paris, Texas, with her daddy,

mama, and brother Jack, Jack too young to go

to war and hating it, and they went to California

to pick dates in Indio in the Mojave Desert, live

in a tent city, and while my mother stood on

top of a ladder picking dates all day, I, only

a bitty thing, sat on the bottom rung and drew

pictures with a stick in the dirt and after

the war when my mother and father went back

together and we saw the movie "The Grapes of

Wrath" about the Dust Bowl folks named Joad,

I said, knowing that movie stars pretended

to be real people, that's us, that's us,

and my mother said, no, honey, their names're

Joad, like on the road, and we're Jobe, like

Job in the Bible, nobody's ever had it as hard

as Job, and besides, honey, your Uncle Jack's

far, far handsomer than Henry Fonda.