Merle Haggard sings of the starkness and hard times of the poor of Oklahoma, California, the cotton fields, the machinery and relationships that don't work.
Many poor were left behind long after the Dust Bowl days- these are the people he sings about.
NOT polished music, ragged and gaunt, talking of the losers in the race-

A good example is California Cottonfields

My drifting memory goes back to the spring of '43
When I was just a child in momma's arms
My daddy plowed the ground and promised someday we would leave
This run-down Oklahoma farm.

Then one night I heard my daddy saying to my momma
That he'd finally saved enough to go
California was his dream a paradise for he had seen
Pictures in magazines tha told him so.

California ottonfields----
Where labor camps were filled with weary men with broken dreams
California cottonfields----
As close to wealth as daddy ever came

Nearly everything we had was sold or left behind
From my daddy's plow to the soup momma canned
Some folks came to say farewell or see what all we had to sell
Some just came to skake my daddy's hand.

That model A was loaded down and California bound
A change of luck was just four days away
But the only change that I remember seeing in my daddy
Was when his dark hair turned to silver gray.