12 Oct 2008 - The dozen or so men that gather weekly for breakfast at the local bowling alley are the last of the Okie generation. Their families migrated to the Bakersfield, Calif., area during the Great Depression, fleeing the Dust Bowl of the Midwest. Although they were very young when their families traveled a gravely Route 66 to find work in the lush farms of the California Central Valley, the culture of the Great Depression lives on in them to this day, a culture the encourages savings and avoids debts.