TWENTY YEAR TRAGEDY
It is so easy for the rest of us to overlook the years of suffering millions of Americans endured during the Dust Bowl years starting in 1930 in our mid-western states.
The effects are noticeable even today in many areas and in a host of lives. The ill effects of those years can be seen in the health records of those who stayed there and fought the seemingly unending battle with Nature as well as those who packed up their remaining belongings and trekked to California or some other haven of safety.
The scars of those years of extreme poverty and loss are evidence in statistical studies and tell of one of the most stressful times of our national history.
We must not forget those times and those people. We may be wrapped up in our current troubles ...economic, possible war at any moment, cultural malaise and bewilderment and social problems of various kinds - but others have suffered severe hardships which were just as bad in many ways - and survived. We can learn from their example.
It is so typically American, that the average one of us can thinks of the “Dust Bowl” era in a humorous manner. You, no doubt, think of two things when the term is mentioned..”The Grapes of Wrath”, a novel, by John Steinbeck, or more likely, your memory of the film made from that book. The other thing you will think of will be an even more readily association with Jed Clampett and his Beverley Hillbilly family who, having struck it rich in oil, went west to Hollywood. Our sense of humor is our safety valve assuring the survival of some sanity in times of disaster. It is a very good quality to have, but, in seeing the humorous side of tragedy, one must not obliterate the memory of the evil of those times entirely, because they could be repeated in the same, or some other form, at any moment.
It is difficult or any of us to imagine the horror of seeing dense clouds of of choking dust swirling around us from darkened skies, augmented by high winds and electrical storms. Livestock perished and the soil on which people depended for the main crop of wheat was blown away. Everywhere it was replaced with drifted dunes of shattered earth and the residue of a civilization which no longer existed. Many of us learned a lesson or two from those Dust Bowl decades. Far too many had to learned the lesson first-hand, but all of us came to see the value of Soil Conservation and other related practices concerning the proper use of the God-given gifts of natural resources wealth.
We do well to remember that which we have acquired through the suffering of so many before us.
A.L.M. February 27, 2003 [c476wds]
