A lesson, warning, and proposal for the Nipomo Mesa 

I got to know the late Harold Miossi shortly after settling here after finishing grad school at Cal in 1976. I had the privilege of enjoying his occasional company until his death in 2006.

Harold's name graces two fine concert venues—the PAC at Cal Poly and the CPAC at Cuesta College—as well as the city's Miossi Open Space on Cuesta Grade. The Miossi Charitable Trust funds many worthy causes in this community.

In 1936, Miossi had just entered high school in the depth of the Great Depression. Somehow, he learned of a crisis facing more than 5,000 desperate migrant laborers on the Nipomo Mesa, idled by a hard freeze in the winter of 1935-36. In an essay for his English teacher at SLO High School, Harold told how he'd visited a makeshift "school" in an abandoned Pacific Coast Railroad warehouse in Nipomo: In that drafty barn with little lighting and boarded-up windows, a harried teacher shared a few tattered textbooks among tables and benches teeming with hungry children whose parents worked nearby to glean the few stalks of peas that had survived the freeze.

In 1936, California had no intention of becoming a "sanctuary state" for the migrant farm laborers such as those shivering tent dwellers in Nipomo. On the contrary, the LA police and then Gov. Frank Merriam implemented a blockade at the border to prevent more Dust Bowl families from entering the state.

One notable Nipomo family included seven gaunt children led by Florence Owens Thompson, 32, a native Cherokee who had traveled from Oklahoma with her children. They were barely holding it together in a lean-to beside their broken-down jalopy.

This hapless family drew the attention of Dorothea Lange, a traveling photographer who happened upon this labor camp in March 1936. The Resettlement Administration had hired Lange to record the living conditions of migrant workers throughout the nation. Her iconic Migrant Mother photograph of Thompson and her children inspired President Roosevelt, Congress, and the entire nation to come to the aid of these desperate workers throughout the United States.

In the face of staggering levels of unemployment, "Hoovervilles," soup kitchens, and abandoned homes and farms and factories, FDR and his allies built an entire infrastructure—the New Deal—dedicated to that clause in the Preamble to the Constitution that called our nation into being in order to promote the general welfare.

The federal response was matched by an equally robust local response: Within a few months after Lange's 1936 photograph of Thompson—and Miossi's visit to that shabby warehouse "school"—county Superintendent of Schools Al Rhodes was on the case. Rhodes managed to find the resources to renovate the Nipomo Men's Club as a public school to serve those thousands of families huddled on the Mesa.

Rhodes would go on to serve as the county's education czar for decades, earning a national reputation as a resolute advocate for rural education. In 2006, the Lucia Mar School District named its newest school in Nipomo for Dorothea Lange.

On this Labor Day, we need to acknowledge the great advances of the New Deal, especially workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively. Those rights are very much in peril now.

Our commitment to public education is also threatened. A cabal of right-wing "influencers" constantly seeks to undermine our public schools—including a candidate seeking to unseat our Democratic Assemblymember Dawn Addis.

Too many seem to have forgotten the lessons that people like Rhodes and Miossi embodied throughout their careers—especially this lesson, learned in the depths of the Great Depression: All children should receive the benefit of a quality, taxpayer-funded education.

Remarkably, the Nipomo Men's Club still exists at 210 West Tefft St. in Nipomo! It serves a limited purpose as a bar and event venue. The building still exhibits much of the character that reflects its historic use as a Depression-era school serving migrant families.

Even more amazing is the fact that the field where Dorothea Lange snapped her historic Migrant Mother photograph is still completely undeveloped.

Almost 10 years ago, I attended the 80th anniversary of the Migrant Mother snapshot along with Dan Krieger, his wife, Elizabeth, and dozens of local and out-of-state history buffs including the late Bill Denneen and former Supervisor Ruth Brackett. Those who knew Bill and Ruth understood they were sworn adversaries over many decades, but in March 2016 they found common cause in celebrating that anniversary.

We're coming up now on the 90th anniversary of Dorothea Lange's brief but consequential encounter with Florence Owens Thompson in Nipomo. I propose that we commit ourselves to a new purpose: Let's create a Museum of the Great Depression on the grounds of the Nipomo Men's Club and include (if we can) the nearby site of that remarkable photograph.

There is no such museum anywhere in the nation. We have countless museums to commemorate the events of our Revolution, the Civil War, both world wars, 9/11—virtually every national calamity except that 1930s economic catastrophe that forged our national character and proved our resilience as a people.

There is no single piece of American geography that better represents that determination than an open field on North Oak Glen Avenue and a shambolic building on West Tefft Street.

Miossi and Rhodes would know how to get it done. Do we? Δ

Respond to John Ashbaugh with a letter to the editor by sending it to letters@newtimesslo.com.