I’m a member of an online book club that’s committed to reading about, and respectfully discussing, controversial subjects. Occasionally, we open a can of worms that requires me to struggle, and our latest book has done that in spades. The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan is an account of the Dust Bowl years.
Growing up among people who survived the thirties, I was taught to be frugal and prepare for an unrainy day. There was mention of the unrelenting heat, dust storms, and dearth of moisture but, other than fences buried in dirt and wet sheets covering windows, details weren’t included. My people tend to just endure the worst and move on.
I asked Dad once, how many cattle we lost in the blizzards of 1949. He brushed it off with this. “Too many.” That was apparently all he could bear to tell. Same with the neighbors. My generation remembers that winter, and are more inclined to speak of it, but the real hardships were hidden from children because we boarded in town for school. My folks were stranded for 3 months. Despite a cellar of home canned food, they must have been on the edge of starvation by the time they dug out. I never thought to ask about that, but they wouldn’t have told anyhow.
I was born on the tail end of the dust years; too young to wonder how it was for my parents. I knew that Mom taught school for eighty dollars a month, and paid room and board out of that, but never thought to ask how her parents managed to afford college for her and my uncle.
The Worst Hard Time is cruel reading. As a rancher, my heart broke for starving animals and the ruination of the land. It made me angry too, because of parallels between what led up to that national disaster, and our present situation. The political scene was very similar, both globally and in America.
West of the 100th meridian, rain seldom reaches 20 inches a year. Frankly, I’d be happy with 16. But settling the plains was built on lies by our government. Rain would follow the plow, they said, so the native grasses that sustained wildlife and indigenous people was plowed under, and crops planted. Settlers were encouraged to plow more, acquire more debt, and seek a lifestyle akin to the urban population. A few good years did follow, as they sometimes do.
When the weather changed, as it always has, and always will, Washington implemented programs to persuade people to keep on doing the wrong things. The New Deal wasn’t a very good deal. Like current relief packages, some of it helped some people, but not very much, or for very long. What it mostly did was make folks more dependent on government and give it more control over daily life. CCC shelter belts helped, but at first, they ran north to south. Apparently, nobody asked plains dwellers about the direction of our prevailing winds.
Some wanted to bring water out of the Ogallala aquifer to irrigate land suitable only for grazing. Rejected as impractical at the time, that has come to fruition. Today, groundwater levels decline yearly. It’s not unusual to see shelter belts being dozed to make room for pivots and fence-to-fence planting.
There was talk of climate change during the dust bowl. Later, scientific studies proved that drought cycles are a regular occurrence in this part of the world. In the name of money and power, we simply ignore the lessons that the land has always begged us to learn. Eventually, society and the economy break down, and the fiddler must be paid. Here we go again.