Chapter 7
Patter of the used-car lot
Summary
An intercalary chapter written almost entirely as the patter of a used-car lot. The dealer coaches his salesman Joe on how to soften up the dispossessed families now desperate for anything that will carry them to California: start them high and work them down, watch the wife's face, make them feel they are wasting your time and then sock it to them. Sawdust goes into a failing rear end, a dud battery replaces the good one before delivery, tyres are switched. A man trading two good mules is talked into taking twenty dollars for the pair plus wagon, fifty cash down and a contract for the rest — and the paper is sold straight on to a finance company so complaints have nowhere to land. Running under the sales talk is one refrain: if I could only get five hundred jalopies, this won't last forever.
Plates
Illustration style
Composition
Written: 8 June 1938 to 15 June 1938 Journal entries: #9, #15 Dating: from DeMott's editorial markers in Working Days
From the journal
8 June 1938, Wednesday, 10:45 — Entry #9
[…] them separate in his mind. Today Joad and Casy come home and find the house deserted. They meet Muley Graves and he tells them where Joad’s parents are. They sleep in Muley’s deserted house. Background for the moving comes in here. This is followed by the general [Ed.—Chapter 7] of the old cars, of the equipment, of the moving technique, […]
15 June 1938, Wednesday, 11:15 — Entry #15
[…] he gets it. Wrote to Pare asking him to bear down on it. Don’t know whether he can. I would be glad if Dick got in and it would help me too. Now, concerning work. Today used cars, people and methods of selling, and hustle, profits, trades [Ed.—Chapter 7]. I think I can make it. Must be good, general and […]
Source: Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938–1941, ed. Robert DeMott (Viking, 1989).