Each summer of my childhood my parents would wake us before it was light, our station wagon filled with clothes, books, and a cooler of snacks and we would head west. We made the long trek across what I affectionally think of as the “flat states”, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa until we stood at the bluffs and looked across the river to Nebraska. It was a long trip made in one day, fourteen hours of corn and soybean fields. Part family vacation, part pilgrimage to the holy land. Nebraska and it’s rolling fields were the place that most of my father’s family had called home since immigrating to America. Our summer trips there not only included visiting with our relatives still farming the same land their parents had farmed, but also included visits with those relatives who had passed on. I knew the resting places of my great-grandparents as well as I knew the stories of their lives.
Recently, I read the book Dust Bowl, written to accompany the documentary by the same name. While reading this book I realized that my grandparents had lived in this time, on the eastern edge of what had come to be known as the dust bowl. For all the family stories we had been told as children, very few referenced the Great Depression, and I could not recall one mention of the dust. So, I asked my grandpa to tell me about those years. He has started writing stories of his memories for me. When they are ready I will share them in their entirety, but for now I would like to just share a few excerpts with you.
The dust bowl came in the mid 1930s, the years of extremely dry weather, the days when we, the whole family, watched sunsets, hoping against hope, for clouds, clouds with rain, a small shower would help. Prayers were prayed. None were answered. Dust gathered on the hymnals as Reverend Jensen kneeled before Communion items, down front, covered by something white.
Dust storms it seemed were to be endured. The winds. They came and came. They came in the day, they came in the night. Their calling card was grime, everywhere. You felt it in your hair, your clothing, on the kitchen table. Piles of soil grew behind the east-west fences where Russian thistles clung to the wire and captured tons of soil. Soils came from Kansas, and Oklahoma and Texas. Some days the dirt was reddish, with iron content, revealing its source.
O’le Charlie deserves a few words in this story. Grandpa Cunningham,
Charlie stayed with us often after the crash in 1929. He experienced the Dust Bowl period, anguish and all In the 20s he owned rich, productive farmland, the controlling interest in a local bank, built a two story new house and bought a large ranch near North Platte. He had rail sidings on the Chicago-Northwestern out west and in Kennard. Little calves were shipped by rail to the ranch siding, grazed all summer at the ranch, returned in the autumn to be fattened on corn and sold at the Omaha stockyards in the winter. It was a good arrangement, businesslike in every way
The 1929 crash came. And he lost it all. He was a broken man, walking, head bowed, often carrying a hammer. He said, it was to “fix things.” But they could not be fixed. I walked with him during the dusty days, he with a hammer, and me with questions.
One thing my grandpa wanted to make very clear to me was that although these times were very difficult, people kept on living. They had parties, they played cards, were neighborly with one another, came together for threshing and harvesting, and life went on. For my grandpa and his brothers and their peers everyone was in the same boat. No one was exempt from the dust or the depression, it was not a case of have’s and have not’s and so their recollection of the time is peppered with not only the hard times but also the wonderful, joyful, and often humorous times. Here is one of those stories:
Ray Rosenbaum, a successful farmer who held onto his property during the depression owned an expensive field silage cutter. He cut and chopped silage for neighbors that could pay a modest per acre charge. On this morning, Ray began cutting on the Grover Wilkens’ farm. He stopped to grease his machine and in so doing got too close to the power take off drive shaft and got his clothing entangled in the drive. Every stitch of clothing was stripped from his body. He was stark naked, without a jacked, or any other clothing to keep him warm or save his dignity. It was getting cold and he was several hundred yards from the Wilkens house. This was beyond embarrassment. No alternatives came to mind so he walked quickly to the front door, and knocked aggressively, we were told. Mrs. Wilkens opened the door. Although she knew Mr. Rosenbaum quite well, she was not prepared to receive him in his condition. Obviously, she provided clothing and the telephone to use in calling his home. His wife Grace, ever grateful for his non-injury, was always well stocked with adjectives. She loved to tell the story.
