It was “The Grapes of Wrath,” the novel that told of the “Okies” from Oklahoma travelling to California in the 1930s during the Dust Bowl. Some 70 years later in a twist of irony, a “Bust Bowl” is occurring from the West to the Midwest.

Last year, many members of my family became fed up with the traffic, housing costs, crime rates and overall congestion in California and declared, “Oklahoma or Bust!” I thought they were out of their minds. Leaving the fifth largest economy with its beaches and rolling mountains to return to the the dry, flat lands that most our ancestors once fled?