Book Thoughts: Worst, Hard, Time by Timothy Egan

Last week a tornado swept across the Oklahoma prairie. It leveled a town, destroyed livelihoods and took children, parents, and pets. While this happened I was in the midst of reading another story about this same part of the country. It was the story of the Dust Bowl. It was a story that left me even more in awe of the hard-core men and women who settle in the Great Plains. It was a story that allowed me to look at the faces on CNN with a different kind of respect - the respect that one has for those who persevere during hardship, who pass the lessons of hard work and determination onto their children. It was a true story. What's scary about Egan's book is that it is a work of nonfiction.

The people that live in the Great Plains today are the children and grandchildren of the people who never gave up. Of course my respect and admiration for the "Greatest Generation" of the Great Plains is mitigated by the fact that they created, or at least aided and abetted, their own troubles. Timothy Egan's book starts in the latter half of the 19th century. He talks about the cowboys on the Plains and the gradual transition to farming which became more rapid as the First World War shot up crop prices. The Great Plains never has been (and never will be) good farming land. It was the land "where the buffalo roamed." The vast grasslands held the soil in place for millennia despite the wind and drought. But our government's policies pushed the buffalo and the Native Americans out in favor of homesteaders and railroad companies. It was the last area of the country where men and women could have a piece of ground to call their own, and after the Civil War many took advantage of this offering.

Timothy Egan artfully tells the story of the Dust Bowl through the eyes of several families. Their stories take us through the prosperity of the war years where every inch of the land was plowed up to feed the U.S. and all of Europe. It takes us through the 1920s where prices fell due to decreased demand, yet fields were still plowed up year after year to break even. Farmers did this with no thought of what they were doing to their tomorrow.

Tomorrow came with a crash and a storm - or rather, many storms. The Depression hit the country about the time the skies dried up and the soil began to blow. Interwoven between the pages of this book is the story of Hazel Lucas, a teacher who got married, had a baby, and despite all her efforts lost her child to dust pneumonia. There are the housewives who sweep their floors and chairs and tables only to have the wind instantly blow more earth through the covered windows. The inability to provide for their families breaks even the strongest of men. Most leave. Entire towns disappear and are left covered in dust, their former inhabitants eeking out a living elsewhere. Yet it is the ones who stay that I admire. The ones who weathered the storm they helped to create. These were the people that were tied to their land, their home. Their children and grandchildren live there today. They will survive. They are made of the right stuff.