Post by cottonpicker on Aug 22, 2011 21:05:17 GMT -5
TALES OF THE “DUST BOWL”
Larry D. Davis
“Eleven cent cotton and 40 cent meat, how in the world can a poor man eat?” Those lyrics from the Depression era song written in 1931 pretty well sum up the stories I’ve heard first-hand all my life from my own mother, now aged 91, and my Dad. She and
my Dad both lived through those terrible 1930’s in Oklahoma which left embedded memories that affected the remainder of their lives.
According to Mom and what I’ve gathered from reading, the years 1926-1931 saw
unprecedented bumper crops in our nation’s breadbasket. It was this overabundance
that made farmers want to plow up even more of the virgin prairie lands and sow even bigger crops. But…what they hadn’t counted on were three future record drought years, 1934-1936, when crops withered, dried up, and died. Cattle starved and record temperatures were recorded: 134 degrees in 1934. The parched ground cracked open like 40 acres of over- baked cookies and the drying winds exchanged topsoil between Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas & points farther north in gigantic and dark billowing clouds that actually blocked the sun until, according to my Dad, “chickens went to roost in the middle of the day”. He told me that “Sandy, dry soil blew so hard that piles of it covered the fences and posts so deep that cattle could walk right over them on the dunes”. Cattle herds starved and the price of a whole beef dropped to $14.00 per head and 50% of the herds were so ravaged by starvation and thirst that they had to be destroyed. My Dad told of using a bulldozer to dig pits and bury the carcasses. The proverbial breadbasket of the nation was empty and America was brought to her knees.
In 1933 my Mother’s oldest brother, Harry, joined the “CCC” (the Civilian Conservation
Corps.), a federally sponsored program which was established to provide jobs and
income for needy families. It was run like a military organization and he ended up
serving his stint in California fighting forest fires and such. Each cadet was paid $30.00 per month and they were “required” to send $25.00 back home to their family and retain only $5.00 for personal use for that month. Sounds very extreme to us, right?? Well… those were extremely dire circumstances. Would we be willing or able to do the same today? What?? No Smart phones or i-Pods?? Let’s hope we’re never called to do so!!
Mother recalls dirt blowing and drifting inside the farmhouse so badly that bed sheets were soaked in water and hung over the doors and windows to catch the dust as it filtered in. Her younger sister, Nadine, contracted “Dust Pneumonia”, a serious but common ailment during the Dust Bowl era.
In 1934, Mom’s family “lost the farm” they had worked since 1917, along with thousands of other unfortunate farmers when there was no way possible for them to meet payments on the farm or pay their debts. After that, they became “sharecroppers” working for someone else who had fared better and it seemed that Granddad lost his incentive….was psychologically destroyed….after this unfortunate turn of events.
On the other hand, Dad’s family—crusty and tough ol’ Texas stock since 1853 fared much better! Grandad Davis was a good provider,” tough as a boot” and a “survivor”, no matter what came his way. He was used to adversity! But, his interesting life story is best left for another time…
Finally, conditions became so bad that my Dad joined other “Okies” and headed out on
“The Mother Road”--- Route 66, which ran right thru my hometown, to California. Remember “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck? Dad, his sister, (Aunt) Bea, and her husband, Uncle David, drove to California in an old jalopy of a car and they told numerous tales about blowing tires, repairing them with “cold patches”on the roadside, blowing head gaskets, repairing them on the side of the road with “spares” they had thoughtfully brought along with them and uncounted numbers of “breakdowns” while traveling thru the desert Southwest. I heard those same stories recounted so many times during family gatherings that I never really “listened“ to them, so, unfortunately, I can’t include a lot of detail that I have “heard” but did not pay much attention to as a child. Now, sixty years later, I regret that!
Once they reached “the promised land”---California, and being unemployed and nearly penniless, they had to sleep in their car and catch fish in the ocean surf for food until they “snagged” a job. Soon they all landed good-paying jobs at Libby’s Canneries and the money came rolling in. More than they had seen in years! At last they could send money back home to help their poor but deserving families in drought-ridden western Oklahoma.
Finally, the situation began improving in OK as the rains returned, winds abated and
conditions improved. The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression were ending. Agricultural Conservation practices were improved, shelter belts of trees were planted to deter the perpetual Oklahoma wind and farming returned to normal, except they now
terraced the land instead of plowing flat fields. Those “shelter belts” are still, today, a
common scene in the farming areas of my own native western Oklahoma.
Dad returned to Oklahoma about 1938, started dating Marie Bowen whom he had
known most of his life and they were married. I came along a year later and we all lived
“happily ever after”.
©2009LarryD.Davis
Larry D. Davis
“Eleven cent cotton and 40 cent meat, how in the world can a poor man eat?” Those lyrics from the Depression era song written in 1931 pretty well sum up the stories I’ve heard first-hand all my life from my own mother, now aged 91, and my Dad. She and
my Dad both lived through those terrible 1930’s in Oklahoma which left embedded memories that affected the remainder of their lives.
According to Mom and what I’ve gathered from reading, the years 1926-1931 saw
unprecedented bumper crops in our nation’s breadbasket. It was this overabundance
that made farmers want to plow up even more of the virgin prairie lands and sow even bigger crops. But…what they hadn’t counted on were three future record drought years, 1934-1936, when crops withered, dried up, and died. Cattle starved and record temperatures were recorded: 134 degrees in 1934. The parched ground cracked open like 40 acres of over- baked cookies and the drying winds exchanged topsoil between Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas & points farther north in gigantic and dark billowing clouds that actually blocked the sun until, according to my Dad, “chickens went to roost in the middle of the day”. He told me that “Sandy, dry soil blew so hard that piles of it covered the fences and posts so deep that cattle could walk right over them on the dunes”. Cattle herds starved and the price of a whole beef dropped to $14.00 per head and 50% of the herds were so ravaged by starvation and thirst that they had to be destroyed. My Dad told of using a bulldozer to dig pits and bury the carcasses. The proverbial breadbasket of the nation was empty and America was brought to her knees.
In 1933 my Mother’s oldest brother, Harry, joined the “CCC” (the Civilian Conservation
Corps.), a federally sponsored program which was established to provide jobs and
income for needy families. It was run like a military organization and he ended up
serving his stint in California fighting forest fires and such. Each cadet was paid $30.00 per month and they were “required” to send $25.00 back home to their family and retain only $5.00 for personal use for that month. Sounds very extreme to us, right?? Well… those were extremely dire circumstances. Would we be willing or able to do the same today? What?? No Smart phones or i-Pods?? Let’s hope we’re never called to do so!!
Mother recalls dirt blowing and drifting inside the farmhouse so badly that bed sheets were soaked in water and hung over the doors and windows to catch the dust as it filtered in. Her younger sister, Nadine, contracted “Dust Pneumonia”, a serious but common ailment during the Dust Bowl era.
In 1934, Mom’s family “lost the farm” they had worked since 1917, along with thousands of other unfortunate farmers when there was no way possible for them to meet payments on the farm or pay their debts. After that, they became “sharecroppers” working for someone else who had fared better and it seemed that Granddad lost his incentive….was psychologically destroyed….after this unfortunate turn of events.
On the other hand, Dad’s family—crusty and tough ol’ Texas stock since 1853 fared much better! Grandad Davis was a good provider,” tough as a boot” and a “survivor”, no matter what came his way. He was used to adversity! But, his interesting life story is best left for another time…
Finally, conditions became so bad that my Dad joined other “Okies” and headed out on
“The Mother Road”--- Route 66, which ran right thru my hometown, to California. Remember “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck? Dad, his sister, (Aunt) Bea, and her husband, Uncle David, drove to California in an old jalopy of a car and they told numerous tales about blowing tires, repairing them with “cold patches”on the roadside, blowing head gaskets, repairing them on the side of the road with “spares” they had thoughtfully brought along with them and uncounted numbers of “breakdowns” while traveling thru the desert Southwest. I heard those same stories recounted so many times during family gatherings that I never really “listened“ to them, so, unfortunately, I can’t include a lot of detail that I have “heard” but did not pay much attention to as a child. Now, sixty years later, I regret that!
Once they reached “the promised land”---California, and being unemployed and nearly penniless, they had to sleep in their car and catch fish in the ocean surf for food until they “snagged” a job. Soon they all landed good-paying jobs at Libby’s Canneries and the money came rolling in. More than they had seen in years! At last they could send money back home to help their poor but deserving families in drought-ridden western Oklahoma.
Finally, the situation began improving in OK as the rains returned, winds abated and
conditions improved. The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression were ending. Agricultural Conservation practices were improved, shelter belts of trees were planted to deter the perpetual Oklahoma wind and farming returned to normal, except they now
terraced the land instead of plowing flat fields. Those “shelter belts” are still, today, a
common scene in the farming areas of my own native western Oklahoma.
Dad returned to Oklahoma about 1938, started dating Marie Bowen whom he had
known most of his life and they were married. I came along a year later and we all lived
“happily ever after”.
©2009LarryD.Davis