A heartbreaking story
"After more than sixty-five years, some of the land is still sterile and drifting. But in the heart of the old Dust Bowl now are three national grasslands run by the Forest Servie. The land is green in the spring and burns in the summer, as it did in the past, and antelope come through and graze, wandering among replanted buffalo grass and the old footings of farmsteads long abandoned."
This book is a remarkable accomplishment - Timothy Egan introduced me to a group of hardscrabble men and women living through, as the title tells us, the worst hard time, and left me stunned with the grace that can be found in the harshest of stories. I feel drunk with it, and broken hearted.
Probably the most emotionally resonant aspect of his story, for me, were the entries from the diary of Don Hartwell, which was rescued from being burned by his wife, Verna, after his death. Don and Verna were forced to separate at the end of the drought years when his farm was finally foreclosed on - the diary itself is spare, stoic and devastatingly sad, with entries like these:
"You hear a great deal about the 'noble pioneers' building up the country, and to a certain extent this is probably true. But the women and children of those times were the ones who faced the real hardships and privations. Women's place in those days was in the home, which usually meant having 2 kids every 3 years and doing as much work as 2 ordinary men and living amid conditions which would cause a common hobo to breathe the open air and face the open road with 'thanksgiving.' The men were, in many cases, drunken, or ingrown religious fanatics who were worse to live with and deal with even than the drunks."
Nov 24
The first thanksgiving since 1912 when Verna & I haven't been together. Will we ever live together again?
July 10
The same clear, glaring sky & vicious blazing killing sun. Cane is about dead, corn is being damaged; it will soon be destroyed. Those who coined the phrase "There's no place Nebraska" wrote better than they thought. In Nebraska, you don't have to die to go to hell.
Aug 4
Practically no one comes here now. Of those who used to ask so diffidently "Is Verna here?" not one comes around anymore. They have vanished like last year's crop of turnips.
There are a lot of things that I would like to say, but I think that I will leave you with the words of Don Hartwell.
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