Our Generation's Dust Bowl

“I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battles or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.”

John F. Kennedy

If this pandemic is our generation’s Dust Bowl and we follow the example set by the Greatest Generation, we are going to be okay.

I have developed a keen interest in the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. US Highway 83, bisecting the High Palins, is my favorite vagabonding byway. The area, especially between my two adopted hometowns of McCook, NE in the north to Canadian, TX in the south, was devastated by the endless Great Depression era wind storms and draught.  

The area has always been, and is still in many ways, a “next year” land. Next year, the rain will come back, next year the grain prices will rise, next year credit will be more available; next year, if we can just make it to next year.

I made a point, when my schedule allowed, of approaching every person I encountered in towns along Highway 83 who appeared to be over the age of 80 and request they share with me their personal experiences from the Dust Bowl years. Their tales are now safely recorded on numerous stored cassette tapes I posses.

Most were thrilled to cooperate. Time is of the essence. As with our World War II vets, these aging sources of firsthand accounts from this fascinating era are rapidly disappearing from our world. Several   I spoke with expressed that they felt a duty, as one elderly lady in the no man’s land of the Oklahoma Panhandle told me, before she departed this earth to pass down her firsthand accounts of this horrid time. She told me she was a small girl but she would never forget the walls of dust that blew in at all times of the day and night. She said it was as if the ground had turned upside down.

To their credit, most survivors I spoke with recalled this time of horror truthfully, with no attempt to apply a revisionist makeup to cover the scars. To the survivors, it was what it was, the worst of times. In North Platte, NE I heard the story of an elderly widow who just recently had burned the diary her late husband had kept during the Dust Bowl years. Why destroy such a valuable relic, I asked? She said it was not a time worth remembering, I was told.

Their memories hammer to the core of the hardships in a life dominated by this manmade catastrophe. Day after day, week after week, hard-working families stood by stoically and helplessly as they watched their lives blown away by waves of dust so thick it turned midday into midnight. As these monster storms tore unimpeded through the High Plains, I can only imagine the despair. Death and destruction were everywhere, but somehow, most held on. Symbolic to “burning the boats,” many had no choice but to stay as most had nowhere else to go.

Hopeless is the most devastating word in the English language, and a term used often to describe the “Dust Bowl.” But maybe a better word would be hope. I was struck by how many of the survivors - mere children during these calumnious years -spoke of their parents’ resolve, how against all odds they never lost hope or their dream of carving out a better life in as demanding an environment as found anywhere on this earth.  Somehow, they did.

Even after over 100 years of hardships, men and women seeking a better life are still drawn to the High Plains.  In the new millennium the oil fields and the packing plants have taken the place of the homesteads and the railroads, but the magnetic appeal of a better life has not changed. Juxtaposed side by side, both optimism and disappointment define the rich family history of today’s descendants of the area’s original 19th century pioneering homesteaders.

Family roots on Highway 83 run deep. An obscure quote from a 1915 High Plains newspaper editorial I stumbled upon succinctly sums up these contrasting dynamics, highlighting the resolve so abundant amongst the both past and present hardened survivors: “We should be thankful....... that we are still living to try again.”