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The Worst Hard Times by Timothy Egan
This nonfiction story explores the horrendous dust storms that struck parts of
Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas in the 1930's. The author
intermingles accounts of the daily lives of political leaders, newspaper
editors, farm and business families, actual people that endured these hardships.
These formed the fabric of small towns darkened in the dust bowl.
After the best farm land was occupied, immigrant families wanting to own their
own farm settled this prairie land with grass sod, frequent winds and low
rainfall. They plowed the land and planted wheat. After making money for a
couple of years, the wheat price fell and desperate farmers unable to pay their
bills, plowed up more soil to plant more wheat the next year. During droughts
without the anchor of plant roots, the wind stripped the soil blowing it aloft
and transporting it hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Fine black dust pelted everything in its path. On a previously sunny day
visibility was reduced to feet. Dust penetrated cracks in houses and formed
piles on window ledges, tables, stoves. It entered people’s and animal’s noses
and mouths. Cows died of stomachs clogged with dust. Babies sickened with dust
pneumonia. Many small towns became ghost towns. In spite of deaths, crop
failures, food shortages, many settlers proved tenacious.
Due to the loss of topsoil, some areas have never been reclaimed. In others,
farmers supplement the low erratic rainfall with irrigation water from the
aquifer, now shrinking. Agriculture based on plowing in this ecosystem is
unsustainable.
These same families are filmed in the WPA movie, “The Plow that Broke the Plain”
and an American Experience episode broadcast on TV.
Review written December 11, 2008.
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