Mystery at Devil’s Den

By E. Robb Martin

Was it an accident or was it murder? Did it matter all that much anyhow? The people living in the camp had their own problems, they didn't want to get involved in someone else's. Living in a labor camp and working in the fields was not all that exciting, however there were always a few ways one could find to get into trouble. Follow 11 year old Robby and some of his adventures while living in Devil's Den.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E. Robb Martin
• Release date: Jul 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499714302

E. Robb Martin

E. Robb Martin grew up in and currently resides in California.

Book preview

Introduction

There were always people moving in and people moving out. They would show up wanting to know how much work we had for the season, what was the price we paid, and then they would ask if there was an empty cabin for them to live in during their stay at the camp.

Some of the workers would stay from the start to the end of the picking season, others would move in and after a week or so of working be on their way someplace else. Reasons for leaving were never given nor were they expected from anyone.

Most of the moving out would take place at night and never took much time because about the only thing they had to take with them were the clothes on their back, a spoon or two, a few forks, some cracked dishes they had picked up along the way, and maybe a kerosene camp stove that was used whenever there was enough money to buy something to cook. Baloney and light bread was one of the main staples for those moving around from camp to camp. Cans of soup were also an item that could be found among their meager belonging.

This was the life of the migrant farm worker in the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. The place they moved in and out of so often was a farm labor camp.

The farmers had crops that needed to be harvested. There were peaches, pears, and apricots that needed to be picked. There were oranges and lemons to be picked, put in boxes and bags, and sent on their way. And, there was cotton just waiting to be taken from the field and sent to the cotton gin. There were always people that needed the work, and depending on the season and what crop was available to be harvested, you could find hundreds of workers traveling around the areas looking for the fields to work in.

Finding the work was one thing, finding a place to live while working was something else, and that is where the farm labor camp became so important.

Labor camps had been around since the Depression; many had been built by the government for a place to house the thousands of people that had migrated from various Southern states to find work in California.

To ensure they would have sufficient workers to help get the crops out of the fields before the fruit spoiled or before the rains set in, farmers built their own camps to house their workers during the time it took to harvest the farmer’s crops. The number of cabins to house the help would depend on the amount of acreage a farmer had to harvest, how many workers would be needed for the season. There were farm labor camps scattered throughout California; however, the majority of them were in the San Joaquin Valley. The Visalia-Tulare area had a few as did Arvin, Weedpatch and Bakersfield. But, one of the biggest of them all was Devil’s Den.

Devil’s Den, located out in the middle of nowhere, 20 miles from its nearest neighbor, consisted of 50 wood frame cabins, each cabin being about 20x20 in size. The cabin was just one big room, no air conditioner and no heater, although many folks would put in some sort of wood stove to help heat the cabin during the winter time. In addition to the cabins, there were eight two-story wood frame buildings located on the property. The two-story buildings were army barracks that had been used as housing when the United States Army Air Corps had a training base in the area during World War II. The army barracks, along with three small houses and a large building that was used as the mess hall, had been purchased and moved to their present location by the farmer after the government had abandoned them.

The barracks were located at one end of the camp while all the cabins were located on the opposite end. Sitting right in the middle was the mess hall, or cookhouse as it was later referred to. There were three buildings housing the bathrooms and showers located in the camp; one was located near the barracks, one was located at the other end of the camp where the cabins were and another bathroom was located near the middle of the camp, not all that far from the cookhouse. The showers and bathrooms were constructed with cinderblock; there was a men’s on one side of the building and a women’s on the other side. All of these building in the camp were for the housing and conveniences for the farm workers.

The owner of the camp also had 4000 acres of farm land surrounding the labor camp; a variety of crops were grown on this acreage. However, the majority of the land was planted to cotton, which ensured workers living at Devil’s Den their work would last as long or longer than most of the others farms in the area.

Any time you have a large population of people living in such close proximity to one another as the people in the labor camps were living, you have the makings for some type of trouble. You would think that after working in the fields all day, all anyone would want to do would be to go back to their cabin, have supper, and mind their own business, and that is exactly what most of the folks would do. However, there were always a few minor squabbles among a few camp residents.

Oftentimes, the differences would start with a disagreement or fight between the children of two families and then carry on with the adults. It was not uncommon for the camp bosses to be called to a cabin and be faced with the unpleasant duty of breaking up a fight between a husband and wife.

The camp boss usually was the referee who would settle most of the incidents that happen between the occupants of the camp. If the same person or family was always involved in these camp disputes, that person, or family, sometimes would be asked to leave the camp. The camp boss always tried to take care of the problems concerning his camp and his workers. However, there were times he had to stand back and let someone else take care of the situation, and this included death.

These were not easy times for the people that depended on farm work to make a living. The work was hard, the pay was low, the living conditions were tolerable at best, and the truth was always there staring them in the face: What else could they do; most were not trained for any other type of work. Many of these folks had worked on farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana or from whatever state they lived in before making their way to California.

They were lucky to be able to work as much as they did, and they were fortunate to have a cabin to live in. Yes, the cabin was small and a sheet or blanket had to be hung in the middle of the room at night just to have a little privacy, that didn’t matter. No, it didn’t matter there was not any sort of heating or cooling, it didn’t matter that the showers and bathrooms seem to always be located a long ways from the cabin you were assigned to live in.

No, these things didn’t matter all that much, for at least you had a roof over your head at night. What about the ones sleeping in their cars living down by the irrigation ditches? They would be happy to trade places with you.

This was a day-to-day existence for most of the farm workers, not a bright future for them or their children to look forward too, but maybe someday that would change, that was the hope that most of them carried with them.

In 1940, Jeb Woods and his family left Louisiana for California. Jeb and his family made many stops along the way to work in the cotton fields in Texas and Arizona. These work stops were necessary to make enough money to help them get a few more miles closer to California.

Finally, after what seemed like months on the road, the old car that had brought them over 2000 miles from the backwoods of Louisiana to the farmlands of California, broke down in the farm community of Stratford, California. And, that is where Jeb and his family settled for a while.

A few months after Jeb and his family arrived in Stratford, Walt Martin and his family also from Louisiana made their way to California to work the crops before returning back to Louisiana.

Making the trip with Walt was his wife Mandy, their daughter Ruby, her husband Bob Fowler, another daughter, Lola, her husband Jack Jones, and their only son Earl.

The Martin and Woods families had been neighbors in Louisiana prior to Jeb and his family moving to California. Earl had gone to the same school in Newellton, Louisiana, as Jeb’s daughters Wanda Lee and Peggy Inez.

After the arrival of the Martins, the two families found themselves working in some of the same crops and staying in the same labor camps. The work took them all the way north to Sacramento to pick peaches and south to Bakersfield to work in the potato sheds.

When in Bakersfield working in the potato sheds, tragedy struck the Martin family. Walt’s oldest daughter, Ruby, suffered a miscarriage while working in one of the sheds, and infection set in. The doctors did what could be done at that time, however, within a week Ruby Martin Fowler was dead. Not having the money or the means to have her body transported back to her home in Louisiana, Ruby was buried in Bakersfield.

Overcome with grief and complete devastation, Walt and family decided to leave California and go back to Louisiana – that is all the family except his son Earl.

By this time, Earl, and Jeb’s daughter, Wanda Lee, had developed a very strong attachment for one another, and Earl told his folks that he wanted to stay in California. So with sadness on all their faces, tears in the women’s eyes, Walt Martin and his family said goodbye to Jeb Woods and his family. Earl hugged his mom and promised he would write. Jeb told Walt and Mandy that Earl could stay and work right alongside his family; he promised them both that he would treat Earl as he would his own son, and he said with a grin nodding to Earl and Wanda Lee, Wouldn’t surprise me if those two wound up getting married sometimes soon. Within a year Earl Martin and Wanda Lee Woods were married; she was 16, and he was 18.

The following years saw Earl, Jeb and the rest of the family travel throughout the state working and living at various locations during the crop seasons.

For the first few years after Earls’ marriage to Wanda, Earl’s mom and dad and other kin folks that wanted to make the trip would drive out to California from Louisiana,