The Dust Bowl

This is a huge departure from my past few posting but there is no possible way to make a decent transition.

Last week, on our local public television station I watched a two part segment on the Dust Bowl.

It is an amazing part of American history, I had heard about the Dust Bowl but I didn't know anything about.

Though I watched both segments I didn't retain any of the pertinent info so I found this information off of Wikipedia.   In the 1930's particularly from 1934 and 1936 it was a time severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands.

The phenomenon was caused by severe drought combined with farming methods that did not include crop rotation, soil terracing and wind-breaking trees to prevent wind erosion.  Because they did extensive deep plowing the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains displaced the prairie grasses and made it susceptible to high wind.

During the drought of the 1930's without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust and blew away.  At times, the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to the East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C..  The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas.

On May 9, 1934 a two day dust storm deposited 12 MILLION pounds of dust!  On April 14, 1935 known as "Black Sunday" 20 of the worst "black blizzards" occurred throughout the Dust Bowl, causing extensive damage and turning the day to night; witnesses reported they could not see five feet in front of them at certain points. The repercussions of all the dust resulted in 'dust pneumonia', many children and adults died from it or were forever effected by it through their lifetime.

There was a misconception that the flood of migrants to California during the 30's were from the Dust Bowl states but in fact that is not true, only about an eighth of California's population is from the Dust Bowl.  They had interviews of people that were children who had gone through the 1930's in the Dust Bowl states.  Everyone that was interviewed said that with each new year they thought things would get better so their parents would stick it out.  Their stories were amazing.  I can't possibly imagine going through anything like that. The determination, hope, faith, tenacity of the people back then is astounding.

We think what we are experiencing right now is tough but it is NOTHING compared to what happened over 78 years ago.

If that were to happen today, I don't know if we would handle it as well as they did.  I guess we will see what happens on the East Coast with the Sandy survivors.

That concludes today history lesson, there will be a test at the end of the week, notes can be used!  Just kidding.  Sorry, I went off there but it was so interesting.  Unfortunately it is something we don't really talk about.

Keep smiling and know that God loves you and so do I.

L