Vox Hunt: It's All True

Book:  Show us a great non-fiction book.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan was not a bad time at all.  I found it quite readable considering that the story piled one catastrophe on top if another.  The book explains how the “Great American Desert ” was renamed the “Great Plains” and how railroads, land developers, and the government coaxed people westward to settle this windswept area.  The turf of the plains was laid down over thousands of years and served as an insulating covering to the ground—perfect for grazing and impervious to wind and drought. 

When beef prices plummeted, more plainsmen began to plow the earth to plant wheat.  Encouraged by increased demand and high prices for wheat, many more rushed to the area to reap the benefits of farming. 

By the time that the market fell out on wheat all the grasslands were destroyed.  As the drought took hold the winds ripped millions of tons of topsoil from the plains.  This airborne soil formed into great “dusters” that would blot out the sun and bury a farmstead inches deep in dust before they would move on.   The worst of these dusters occurred on Black Sunday, April 14, 1935 on an unusually pleasant day.  Folks has come out of their homes to enjoy the day  when the temperature dropped and all the chicken went to roost.  On the horizon the mother of all dusters loomed and when it arrived it sand-blasted at 60 mph everything in its path.  This event gave birth to the phrase “dust bowl.”

And THEN the drought continued for three more years.  And did I mention the grasshoppers?  And the “dust fever” which was similar to black lung/pneumonia.  Of course the depression Great Depression did not help and little aid came from outside the area as everyone was in dire straights.  

Egan does a fine job of balancing the big environmental picture with intimate views of a few individuals from Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Nebraska.  A cowboy, a farmer, a school teacher, a doctor, a newspaper editor, and others were all equally devastated by the years of drought and desperation.  My favorite of these is cowboy Bam White.  He sensed that the destruction of the grasslands would alter the nature of the plains for the worse.  White’s romantic silhouette beside his plow is the image chosen by Pare Lorentz to represent his documentary The Plow that Broke the Plains.  And you may look forward to my review of that in another post!